Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
More Annotations
A complete backup of https://sierraclubfoundation.org
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://poppyscotland.org.uk
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://kurumaerabi.com
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://liquorland.com.au
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://d-u-v.org
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://ccfpd.org
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://aguirreforgovernor.com
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://itslive.com
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://startpack.ru
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://insuranceerm.com
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://itrcweb.org
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of https://schulthess.ch
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
Favourite Annotations
A complete backup of roseveterinaryhospital.com
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of politikos-shop.gr
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of japan-ukraine.com
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of rodeadaporletras.blogspot.com
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
A complete backup of mathequalslove.blogspot.com
Are you over 18 and want to see adult content?
Text
FILLING THE PAIL
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - As W. B. Yeats never said THE EMPEROR’S NEW THEORY To be frank, I think you’re over-stating the case. I agree with the initial raising in your argument that we must think critically, but by the end of your article, I’m left with the impression that what is needed is a full-court press against a new incoming position.EDUCATION RESEARCH
The evidence for the effectiveness of whole-class, interactive explicit teaching comes from a wide range of studies. Probably the largest body of evidence supporting whole-class explicit teaching is a body of studies that largely took place in the 1950s-1970s and are known as ‘process-product’ research. Briefly, researchers wouldobserve
NO, YOU ARE NOT CANCELLING TEACH LIKE A CHAMPION No, you are not cancelling Teach Like a Champion. Despite having understandable qualms about mob rule, I suspect few people shed a tear when a statue of Edward Colston, slave trader, was toppled from its plinth and unceremoniously dumped in the harbour in Bristol. But then, Winston Churchill’s statue in London was defaced and there are now FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT Wiliam’s settled definition of formative assessment is: “An assessment functions formatively to the extent that evidence about student achievement elicited by the assessment is interpreted and used to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions that would havebeen
OLIVER CAVIGLIOLI’S COGNITIVE LOAD THEORY RESOURCES Oliver Caviglioli’s Cognitive Load Theory Resources. Cognitive Load Theory, developed by John Sweller and colleagues, is an increasingly influential learning theory among teachers who are engaging with educational research. It is the area that I am studying as part of my postgraduate research. POSITIVE EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THE PHONICS SCREENING CHECK Over on the DDOLL network, Jennifer Chew has shared a new piece of research on the impact of the phonics screening check in England. The study by researchers at the University of Oxford was published in July of last year, but I was previously unaware of it. The study is not an experiment, it is a longitudinal analysis. In England, children first sit the phonics screening check Year 1. IS MATHS PATHWAY EVIDENCE-BASED? A number of people have recently mentioned to me an Australian teaching programme known as Maths Pathway. The 'co-founder and chief visionary' is Richard Wilson, a former management consultant who appears to have taught for a period of time before starting the enterprise with Justin Matthys, a Teach for Australia alumnus. Interestingly, the advisory board UNIVERSAL DESIGN FOR LEARNING Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has been on my radar since a piece in The Conversation cited UDL research in a discussion of differentiation. The citation immediately struck me as odd. Take a look. There are a series of papers listed that seem to show that providing students with choice is REASONS TO DISLIKE SHAKESPEARE Many students are likely to express distaste at the idea of studying Shakespeare and I would like to put forward four possible reasons for this. 1. The student genuinely does not like Shakespeare. Perhaps our student has seen a play or two, understood them and come to a decision that Shakespeare is not for him. 2.FILLING THE PAIL
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - As W. B. Yeats never said THE EMPEROR’S NEW THEORY To be frank, I think you’re over-stating the case. I agree with the initial raising in your argument that we must think critically, but by the end of your article, I’m left with the impression that what is needed is a full-court press against a new incoming position.EDUCATION RESEARCH
The evidence for the effectiveness of whole-class, interactive explicit teaching comes from a wide range of studies. Probably the largest body of evidence supporting whole-class explicit teaching is a body of studies that largely took place in the 1950s-1970s and are known as ‘process-product’ research. Briefly, researchers wouldobserve
NO, YOU ARE NOT CANCELLING TEACH LIKE A CHAMPION No, you are not cancelling Teach Like a Champion. Despite having understandable qualms about mob rule, I suspect few people shed a tear when a statue of Edward Colston, slave trader, was toppled from its plinth and unceremoniously dumped in the harbour in Bristol. But then, Winston Churchill’s statue in London was defaced and there are now FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT Wiliam’s settled definition of formative assessment is: “An assessment functions formatively to the extent that evidence about student achievement elicited by the assessment is interpreted and used to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions that would havebeen
OLIVER CAVIGLIOLI’S COGNITIVE LOAD THEORY RESOURCES Oliver Caviglioli’s Cognitive Load Theory Resources. Cognitive Load Theory, developed by John Sweller and colleagues, is an increasingly influential learning theory among teachers who are engaging with educational research. It is the area that I am studying as part of my postgraduate research. POSITIVE EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THE PHONICS SCREENING CHECK Over on the DDOLL network, Jennifer Chew has shared a new piece of research on the impact of the phonics screening check in England. The study by researchers at the University of Oxford was published in July of last year, but I was previously unaware of it. The study is not an experiment, it is a longitudinal analysis. In England, children first sit the phonics screening check Year 1. IS MATHS PATHWAY EVIDENCE-BASED? A number of people have recently mentioned to me an Australian teaching programme known as Maths Pathway. The 'co-founder and chief visionary' is Richard Wilson, a former management consultant who appears to have taught for a period of time before starting the enterprise with Justin Matthys, a Teach for Australia alumnus. Interestingly, the advisory board UNIVERSAL DESIGN FOR LEARNING Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has been on my radar since a piece in The Conversation cited UDL research in a discussion of differentiation. The citation immediately struck me as odd. Take a look. There are a series of papers listed that seem to show that providing students with choice is REASONS TO DISLIKE SHAKESPEARE Many students are likely to express distaste at the idea of studying Shakespeare and I would like to put forward four possible reasons for this. 1. The student genuinely does not like Shakespeare. Perhaps our student has seen a play or two, understood them and come to a decision that Shakespeare is not for him. 2.FILLING THE PAIL
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - As W. B. Yeats never said OLIVER CAVIGLIOLI’S COGNITIVE LOAD THEORY RESOURCES Oliver Caviglioli’s Cognitive Load Theory Resources. Cognitive Load Theory, developed by John Sweller and colleagues, is an increasingly influential learning theory among teachers who are engaging with educational research. It is the area that I am studying as part of my postgraduate research. COGNITIVE LOAD THEORY Without rehearsing the full argument here, I will try to summarise: Applications of Cognitive Load Theory generally attempt to reduce cognitive load. However, we also know that too little cognitive load will also lead to little learning. The load can be too low either because something is structurally very simple – such as learning alist of
WHY STRUCTURED WORD INQUIRY IS AT ODDS WITH BASIC I have had a look at the sources and found a couple of videos, both from a place called The Nueva School. Nueva is a Californian school for gifted and high-ability learners.In order to be admitted, students need to pass an IQ test.This is interesting, because IQ (thought to measure something known as ‘general intelligence’ or ‘g’ in the literature) is highly related to working memory WHY PROGRESSIVISM MATTERS Why progressivism matters. Educational progressivism matters. This is not because the majority of schools subscribe to a progressivist philosophy. Far from it. It matters because it is the dominant ideology within academia and the bureaucracies that run our education systems. And this has real, practical significance to teachers andschools.
UNIVERSAL DESIGN FOR LEARNING Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has been on my radar since a piece in The Conversation cited UDL research in a discussion of differentiation. The citation immediately struck me as odd. Take a look. There are a series of papers listed that seem to show that providing students with choice is a good idea. Then, PRIMARY VERSUS SECONDARY Primary versus Secondary. There is an important way to think about what we are trying to achieve in education and this involves making a distinction between the types of knowledge and skills that we want children to learn. The distinction that I have in mind is between biologically primary knowledge and biologically secondary knowledge. REASONS TO DISLIKE SHAKESPEARE Many students are likely to express distaste at the idea of studying Shakespeare and I would like to put forward four possible reasons for this. 1. The student genuinely does not like Shakespeare. Perhaps our student has seen a play or two, understood them and come to a decision that Shakespeare is not for him. 2. WE DON’T NEED NO SIR KEN ROBINSON Robinson cites a study that shows that children can think of more uses for a paper clip than older people and suggests that this is because schools kill creativity. Robinson’s own definition of creativity is, ‘the process of having original ideas that have value,’ and I actually quite like this. However, it would be odd to think that 8 REASONS TO DITCH TRADITIONAL TEACHING METHODS 8 reasons to ditch traditional teaching methods. I advocate explicit instruction. Explicit instruction takes the traditional or default approach to teaching and modifies it to make it even more explicit and highly interactive. This method has its origins in research from the 1960s and 1970s into the behaviours of the most effective teachers andFILLING THE PAIL
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - As W. B. Yeats never saidEDUCATION RESEARCH
The evidence for the effectiveness of whole-class, interactive explicit teaching comes from a wide range of studies. Probably the largest body of evidence supporting whole-class explicit teaching is a body of studies that largely took place in the 1950s-1970s and are known as ‘process-product’ research. Briefly, researchers wouldobserve
NO, YOU ARE NOT CANCELLING TEACH LIKE A CHAMPION No, you are not cancelling Teach Like a Champion. Despite having understandable qualms about mob rule, I suspect few people shed a tear when a statue of Edward Colston, slave trader, was toppled from its plinth and unceremoniously dumped in the harbour in Bristol. But then, Winston Churchill’s statue in London was defaced and there are now CRITICAL THEORY ESCAPES FROM THE LABORATORY Critical Theory escapes from the laboratory. Commentators from across the political divide have been logging their concerns about the influence of Critical Theory for much of the past decade. Until recently, it was possible to dismiss these concerns on the basis that Critical Theory was a parlour game of academics that had no impact onordinary
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT Wiliam’s settled definition of formative assessment is: “An assessment functions formatively to the extent that evidence about student achievement elicited by the assessment is interpreted and used to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions that would havebeen
MINDSET THEORY AND METACOGNITION ARE BOTH FALSE IDOLS Mindset theory and Metacognition are both false idols. The Old Testament scribes were deeply troubled by the worship of false idols and the abominations such worship entailed. Moloch was a singularly unpleasant deity. “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech,” warned the writers of Leviticus. WHO WON THE PARADIGM WARS? A new paper has been published in the American Educational Research Journal that may go some way to explaining the state we are in. The authors analysed the text of 137,024 education PhD dissertations from the United States from 1980 to 2010. They used text-level computational techniques to identify 'topics' within the text i.e.groups
POSITIVE EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THE PHONICS SCREENING CHECK Over on the DDOLL network, Jennifer Chew has shared a new piece of research on the impact of the phonics screening check in England. The study by researchers at the University of Oxford was published in July of last year, but I was previously unaware of it. The study is not an experiment, it is a longitudinal analysis. In England, children first sit the phonics screening check Year 1. UNIVERSAL DESIGN FOR LEARNING Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has been on my radar since a piece in The Conversation cited UDL research in a discussion of differentiation. The citation immediately struck me as odd. Take a look. There are a series of papers listed that seem to show that providing students with choice is IS MATHS PATHWAY EVIDENCE-BASED? A number of people have recently mentioned to me an Australian teaching programme known as Maths Pathway. The 'co-founder and chief visionary' is Richard Wilson, a former management consultant who appears to have taught for a period of time before starting the enterprise with Justin Matthys, a Teach for Australia alumnus. Interestingly, the advisory boardFILLING THE PAIL
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." - As W. B. Yeats never saidEDUCATION RESEARCH
The evidence for the effectiveness of whole-class, interactive explicit teaching comes from a wide range of studies. Probably the largest body of evidence supporting whole-class explicit teaching is a body of studies that largely took place in the 1950s-1970s and are known as ‘process-product’ research. Briefly, researchers wouldobserve
NO, YOU ARE NOT CANCELLING TEACH LIKE A CHAMPION No, you are not cancelling Teach Like a Champion. Despite having understandable qualms about mob rule, I suspect few people shed a tear when a statue of Edward Colston, slave trader, was toppled from its plinth and unceremoniously dumped in the harbour in Bristol. But then, Winston Churchill’s statue in London was defaced and there are now CRITICAL THEORY ESCAPES FROM THE LABORATORY Critical Theory escapes from the laboratory. Commentators from across the political divide have been logging their concerns about the influence of Critical Theory for much of the past decade. Until recently, it was possible to dismiss these concerns on the basis that Critical Theory was a parlour game of academics that had no impact onordinary
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT Wiliam’s settled definition of formative assessment is: “An assessment functions formatively to the extent that evidence about student achievement elicited by the assessment is interpreted and used to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions that would havebeen
MINDSET THEORY AND METACOGNITION ARE BOTH FALSE IDOLS Mindset theory and Metacognition are both false idols. The Old Testament scribes were deeply troubled by the worship of false idols and the abominations such worship entailed. Moloch was a singularly unpleasant deity. “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech,” warned the writers of Leviticus. WHO WON THE PARADIGM WARS? A new paper has been published in the American Educational Research Journal that may go some way to explaining the state we are in. The authors analysed the text of 137,024 education PhD dissertations from the United States from 1980 to 2010. They used text-level computational techniques to identify 'topics' within the text i.e.groups
POSITIVE EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THE PHONICS SCREENING CHECK Over on the DDOLL network, Jennifer Chew has shared a new piece of research on the impact of the phonics screening check in England. The study by researchers at the University of Oxford was published in July of last year, but I was previously unaware of it. The study is not an experiment, it is a longitudinal analysis. In England, children first sit the phonics screening check Year 1. UNIVERSAL DESIGN FOR LEARNING Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has been on my radar since a piece in The Conversation cited UDL research in a discussion of differentiation. The citation immediately struck me as odd. Take a look. There are a series of papers listed that seem to show that providing students with choice is IS MATHS PATHWAY EVIDENCE-BASED? A number of people have recently mentioned to me an Australian teaching programme known as Maths Pathway. The 'co-founder and chief visionary' is Richard Wilson, a former management consultant who appears to have taught for a period of time before starting the enterprise with Justin Matthys, a Teach for Australia alumnus. Interestingly, the advisory boardTACKLING BIAS
Tackling bias. We all suffer from a variety of unconscious biases. Further depressing evidence of this has come with the release of a new review by Paul Connolly and colleagues into setting practices from the UK. In England, setting means the process of grouping students based upon prior attainment. For instance, students with high maths SURFACE STRUCTURE, DEEP STRUCTURE AND PSEUDO-DEEP A moment of realisation occurred when I first read Dan Willingham's 2002 article in American Educator on the topic of inflexible knowledge. Willingham presented the useful distinction between surface structure and deep structure. As with all models, it is probably something of an oversimplification but, as with all good models, it offers explanatory power and in DOUG LEMOV | FILLING THE PAIL Doug Lemov has been a teacher, a school principal, a researcher, a writer and played many other roles in education in the U.S. He is perhaps best known internationally for his practical teaching guide, Teach Like a Champion (TLAC). In this episode, Doug talks to Greg Ashman about the genesis of TLAC, making content relevant to students,reading
WHY STRUCTURED WORD INQUIRY IS AT ODDS WITH BASIC I have had a look at the sources and found a couple of videos, both from a place called The Nueva School. Nueva is a Californian school for gifted and high-ability learners.In order to be admitted, students need to pass an IQ test.This is interesting, because IQ (thought to measure something known as ‘general intelligence’ or ‘g’ in the literature) is highly related to working memory REASONS TO DISLIKE SHAKESPEARE Many students are likely to express distaste at the idea of studying Shakespeare and I would like to put forward four possible reasons for this. 1. The student genuinely does not like Shakespeare. Perhaps our student has seen a play or two, understood them and come to a decision that Shakespeare is not for him. 2. UNIVERSAL DESIGN FOR LEARNING Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has been on my radar since a piece in The Conversation cited UDL research in a discussion of differentiation. The citation immediately struck me as odd. Take a look. There are a series of papers listed that seem to show that providing students with choice is a good idea. Then, PRIMARY VERSUS SECONDARY Primary versus Secondary. There is an important way to think about what we are trying to achieve in education and this involves making a distinction between the types of knowledge and skills that we want children to learn. The distinction that I have in mind is between biologically primary knowledge and biologically secondary knowledge. WHY EDUCATIONAL THEORY IS FLAWED The TES has published an interesting piece by Janet Orchard that argues in favour of teachers learning educational theory. I think that educational theory is incredibly important and awareness of it among teachers is low. I also agree with this statement by Orchard: "Teachers need to be able to plan successful lessons independently,and distinguish
SIX TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR EXPLICIT TEACHING Perhaps you have read a few articles on explicit instruction and you want to try it out. One of the attractions is that explicit forms of teaching are quite similar to default forms of teaching. Most teachers probably stand at the front, explain things and then NO, READING RECOVERY DOESN’T WORK IN AMERICA No, Reading Recovery doesn’t work in America. A couple of years ago, I reported on a large randomised controlled trial in the U.S. of Reading Recovery. I pointed out that, as with other studies of Reading Recovery, it was impossible to tell whether the instructionalprocedures used
Skip to content
FILLING THE PAIL
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." – As W. B. Yeats never saidMenu
* Bio
* About this blog
* Contact
* Commission an article * Teach in Australia* Support this blog
Featured
WELCOME
------------------------- This is the homepage of Greg Ashman, a teacher, blogger and PhD candidate living and working in Australia. Everything that I write reflects my own personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the views of my employer or any other organisation. I have a book out for new teachers (which some experienced teachershave also enjoyed):
The Truth about Teaching: An evidence informed guide for new teachers Watch my researchED talks here and here I have written for The Australian about inquiry learning (paywalled): Inquiry-learning fashion has us running in wheel This is my take on the “Gonski 2.0” review of Australian educationfor Quillette:
The Tragedy of Australian Education Here is a piece I wrote for The Age, a Melbourne newspaper: Fads aside, the traditional VCE subjects remain the most valuable Read a couple of articles I have written for The Spectator here:A teacher tweets
School makes you smarter Read my articles for the Conversation here:Ignore the fads
Why students make silly mistakes My most popular blog post is about Cognitive Load Theory: Four ways cognitive load theory has changed my teaching To commission an article, click hereAdvertisements
Report this ad
Greg Ashman
Uncategorized
5 Comments
August
4, 2013April 22, 20191 Minute
MOONSHOT
Embed from Getty Images ------------------------- I was born seven years after the Apollo 11 Moon landing. As a child growing up, I was obsessed with space and wanted to be an astronaut. It seemed then that the Space Shuttle programme was not a step backward, but a chance to regroup and create the infrastructure to push on to ever greater goals; a moon base, a trip to mars. Even in 1980s Britain, where the government had long abandoned its own serious pursuit of a space programme, developments were under way to build aspaceplane .
On from this time, I have grown through the inevitable disillusionment that adulthood brings. Space programmes did not flourish. Instead, there were notable accidents. Nobody went back to The Moon. The technological revolution we _did _ have was not one that I was expecting; a networked supercomputer in every pocket. I also became aware of other takes on the space programme. As British ideas about spaceplanes encountered problems with something called ‘cost effectiveness’ – as they inevitably would in Thatcher’s monetarist Britain – I also encountered the moral case against space exploration: How can you possibly justify spending billions on sending people into space when there are people who are starving? I now think arguments about cost effectiveness or about other things that money could be spent on are misguided. There is no guarantee that if you stop spending money in one place you can ensure that it is spent wisely in another place. I am no economist, but I believe that wealth is not a zero sum game. Wealth can be created and sometimes you create wealth by building Ziggurats. Moonshots are our Ziggurats. They inspire awe. They inspire purpose. They demonstrate what humanity can achieve, together. This is analogous, I believe, to arguments about education. Education is not just about preparing young people for the workplace. It is not to be judged solely on its cost effectiveness. Education inspires awe. It inspire purpose. It demonstrates what humanity can achieve,together.
Education is our Moonshot.Greg Ashman
Uncategorized
Leave a
comment
July
19, 2019 1
Minute
SURFACE STRUCTURE, DEEP STRUCTURE AND PSEUDO-DEEP STRUCTURE Embed from Getty Images ------------------------- A moment of realisation occurred when I first read Dan Willingham’s2002 article
in _American Educator_ on the topic of inflexible knowledge. Willingham presented the useful distinction between surface structure and deep structure. As with all models, it is probably something of an oversimplification but, as with all _good_ models, it offers explanatory power and in this case, practical implications forteaching.
Willingham contends that initial learning tends to become locked to the surface structure of a domain and this contention is supported by considerable experimental evidence. For instance, Willingham describes how a strategy for solving the problem of defeating an evil dictator who is holed-up in a fortress is structurally identical to a strategy for solving the problem of giving a brain tumour the correct dose of radiation. However, subjects who had successfully solved one of the problems generally failed to apply the same strategy to the other one. We may have a bias for attending to surface structure. After all, deep structure is a layer of abstraction. Such a bias may account for the stories people tell about how they were only ever taught procedures in maths or names and dates in history when at school. Once we are aware of this as teachers, we can build programmes that carefully cycle students through surface structure and deep structure, perhaps by presenting different examples that have the same deep structure and drawing attention to this. However, there is a danger in this discussion that we start to see surface structure as bad and deep structure as good or, alternatively, that we see surface structure as straightforward and deep structure as more complex or profound. Deep structure often encompasses a simple principle or set of principles that it would be quite straightforward to memorise and reproduce. For instance, the principle of the conservation of momentum in physics can be stated as something like, “The total momentum before any collision or explosion is always equal to the total momentum afterwards.” Stick that on a knowledge organiser and pretty soon kids will be able to repeat it back to you. The sophistication is in _recognising_ when this principle applies and then _applying_ this principle to different examples with different surface structure. And this surface structure can become really complicated. That’s why it is effective to use worked examples to minimise cognitive load when first trying to apply such principles. So expert performance requires expert manipulation of _both_ deep structure and surface structure, rather than one or the other. This is similar to the issues that arise from the dichotomy between conceptual and procedural knowledge in mathematics. In many ways, we can consider conceptual knowledge to map onto deep structure and procedural knowledge to surface structure. It is certainly a good thing if a student can give some accurate definition of what the equals sign in an equation represents (i.e. that the two sides have the same value rather than ‘write your answer here’), but if the student cannot actually make use of this to solve 4 + 7 = ? +2, either because they do not recognise that it applies or because they lack the ability to apply it, then it has little value on its own. Mathematics also gives us an example where the ideas of deep structure and surface structure perhaps become iterative. Once internalised, the principle of equivalence as embodied by the equals sign is central to all algebra. Yet different algebraic worked examples could in turn represent the surface structure of some other deep structure such as the fact that circular functions are periodic. The distinction between surface and deep structure can also be applied to educational concepts. Consider Response to Intervention , for instance. This was developed as a means to systematically address literacy and numeracy difficulties, but it has spread to other domains such as behaviour management – School-Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) is a Response to Intervention model that applies to social, emotional and behavioural development. The deep structure of Response to Intervention consists of three tiers. The first tier applies to all students and manifests as high quality explicit teaching coupled with systematic screening. The second tier represents targeted interventions aimed at those who have not made sufficient progress as identified through screening. The third tier involves intensive, individualised intervention for those who make insufficient progress in tier 2. If you are unfamiliar with Response to Intervention then your first question is likely to be, “Can you give me an example of exactly what this looks like?” In other words, to increase your understanding, you would request a description of some surface structure. Without these worked examples, the concept remains in the abstract and far less useful. I have started to wonder whether we have a problem in education with _pseudo-deep structure_. I am going to define this as abstract principles and ideas that are uncoupled from surface structure. The utility of pseudo-deep structure is that it allows a person to adopt the abstract language of the expert without having to test these ideas against messy reality. The concepts of ‘rich tasks’ and ‘deep learning’ seem like good candidates to me. I admit that there may be people out there who can clearly define each of these terms and link them to specific, concrete examples, but this has not been myexperience.
Once we view pseudo-deep structure in this way, it implies an approach to identify and battle it. The next time someone presents some principle that raises your suspicions, you may ask, “Can you give me an example of exactly what that looks like, please?”Greg Ashman
Uncategorized
6 Comments
July 18, 2019July 18, 20194 Minutes
WHEN PROJECT-BASED LEARNING WORKS Embed from Getty Images ------------------------- We all know the story of project-based learning. It has been around since at least 1918 when William Heard Kilpatrick wrote _The Project Method: The use of the Purposeful Act in the Educative__Process_
and yet, over all this time, it has accrued very little evidence of effectiveness. Perhaps the most significant recent development was a randomised controlled trial run by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in the UK. This was necessary because, as the EEF state in their literature review, “The existing evidence for a causal link between PBL and attainment outcomes seems to be weak. Most of the reviewed studies did not involve random allocation of participants to control and experimental groups and, as a result, a causal link between project based learning instruction and positive student outcomes has not been established.” It is quite extraordinary to reflect that we are in this position given the long history of project-based learning and its current popularity, but there we are. In their trial, the EEF found, “Adopting PBL had no clear impact on either literacy (as measured by the Progress in English assessment) or student engagement with school and learning.” They also found a possible _negative_ impact on the literacy of students eligible for free school meals. However both findings have to be treated with caution because so many schools dropped-out of implementing project-based learning during the study. It is due to this background that I predict that project-based learning will soon reappear under a new name – watch this space. However, I did recently come across a study that demonstrates apositive effect
of
project-based learning on scientific understanding which I thought was worth investigating. Tara Craig and Jill Marshall, the authors of the new study, agree with the EEF that, “…there is a lack of studies randomly assigning students to receive PBL,” and so set-out to design a study of their own. This sounds promising – random assignment is the best way of determining a cause-and-effect relationship between a teaching approach and its effects on learning. Once I read the body of the paper, however, my optimism faded. Students were not randomly assigned to project-based learning or some other approach within once school or a group of schools. Instead, entry to Manor New Technology High School, a school using project-based learning, was determined on a lottery basis, with the losers going to the more conventional Manor High School and not receiving project-based learning. These formed the intervention andcontrol groups.
Lotteries are often used for entry into Charter schools in the US and this approach has been used to attempt to determine the effects of Charter schools. It is therefore clear that project-based learning is not the only factor that varies between the groups and the effectiveness of the school would also contribute. It is possible, perhaps likely, that Manor New Technology School attracts better or more motivated teachers and there is also likely to be an effect on the students of gaining entry. I suggest this is likely because Manor High School does not sound great. It had a lower school performance ranking and teacher recruitment and retention issues. For this reason, professional development was focused on classroom management rather than project-based learning. Despite these clear differences, when ethnicity and economic disadvantage are controlled, there was no significant difference between the intervention and control group on four out of five measures involving maths and science performance. However, there was a significant difference favouring the intervention in Year 10 Science. This is hardly encouraging evidence in support of project-basedlearning.
Greg Ashman
Uncategorized
7 Comments
July 17, 2019July 17, 20192 Minutes
WHO WON THE PARADIGM WARS? Embed from Getty Images -------------------------A new paper
has been published in the _American Educational Research Journal_ that may go some way to explaining the state we are in. The authors analysed the text of 137,024 education PhD dissertations from the United States from 1980 to 2010. They used text-level computational techniques to identify ‘topics’ within the text i.e. groups of word stems that occur together. Selected theses were then reviewed by experts as to their content so that the experts could come-up with a name for that topic. For example, one topic contained the stems, “environment, intrins, visitor, motiv, intent,” and the experts labelled it, “Motivation.” The authors then analysed how these topics changed over time and, crucially, how these were connected to career prospects. The pattern was very clear. Quantitative studies that use randomised controlled trials, quasi-experiments or other data analysis to try to tease out cause-and-effect relationships gradually declined over this time and became less valuable in terms of career prospects. Qualitative studies aimed more at description and teasing out differences between groups and contexts increased in proportion and potential career value over this time. Membership of a more prestigious university tended to magnify these effects. There was a period in the late 1980s where these two effects crossed-over and, apparently, authors at the time were aware of the conflict between the two: the paradigm wars. These wars have long been lost by the quantitative side. That explains why it make sense to go on about French philosophers while contributing nothing useful to advancing education if you want to get ahead. And that explains why so many people are doing this.Greg Ashman
Uncategorized
1 Comment
July 16, 2019July 16, 20191 Minute
NEW REVIEW SUGGESTS EDUCATION SCHOOLS ARE FAILING TO TRAIN NEW TEACHERS TO TEACH READING EFFECTIVELY Embed from Getty Images ------------------------- Jennifer Buckingham and Linda Meeks have conducted a new review of Australian initial teacher education for Multilit and Five from Five. They reviewed all of publicly available material published by universities on their websites that related to core literacy units, including prescribed texts and lecturer background. The findings are pretty grim. Only 4% of courses had a specific focus on early reading instruction, with a further 26% mentioning it but lumping it in with other phases. The rest didn’t mention it at all. This is not surprising given that only 15% of lecturers and unit coordinators could be identified as having expertise in early literacy. 55% had expertise in other aspects of literacy such as ‘multi-modal’ literacy (which I think is something to do with computers). 30% had expertise in areas other than literacy. Strikingly, not one course outline mentioned The Simple View of Reading. This is a leading theoretical framework, with further empirical validation published recently. We might speculate that if reading ability can be largely explained as the product of decoding knowledge and oral comprehension, as the simple view implies, this leaves little space for conceptions about comprehension that are popular in educationfaculties.
Phonics denialists will use ad hominem to dismiss this report. Multilit offers reading programmes that schools can purchase. However, these programmes are largely about correcting the failure of initial reading instruction so it is presumably in their commercial interests to maintain the status quo. This argument will not satisfy phonics denialists who are not well-known for their proficiency with logic.Greg Ashman
Uncategorized
1 Comment
July 13, 2019July 13, 20191 Minute
DO SCHOOLS CAUSE THE WELL-DOCUMENTED DIFFICULTIES OF ADOLESCENCE? Embed from Getty Images ------------------------- There was a minor furore on social media following the publication ofan article
on _The Conversation_. The article reported the results of a study on secondary school students in Ireland that found, “…a small but steady decrease in well-being from junior, through to the middle andsenior groups.”
To her credit, the author allowed that, “Hormonal changes during puberty also play a significant role.” However, she then went on to speculate about the role of social media and exams, finishing with recommendations about therapy dogs, muscle relaxation and students deploying their ‘top strengths’. Those on Twitter who are sympathetic to claims that schools and exams are evil – i.e. those with a progressivist education philosophy – committed the statistical sin of assuming correlation was causation and speculated on just why secondary school is such a bad thing. To be fair, _The Conversation_ encouraged this kind of speculation by framing the article with the headline: “Well-being of students starts to decline from the moment they enter secondaryschool.”
Note that the author is highly unlikely to have chosen this headline. Going back to those hormonal changes, a comprehensive review article identifies three stages of the changes that adolescents go through. In early adolescence, “Puberty heightens emotional arousability, sensation-seeking, reward orientation.” Middle adolescence is associated with, “…heightened vulnerability to risk-taking and problems in regulation of affect and behavior.” Finally, things start to improve in late adolescence as the brain’s frontal lobesmature.
Schools are likely to have very little to do with any of this.Greg Ashman
Uncategorized
3 Comments
July 12, 2019July 12, 20191 Minute
NO, A BAN ON MOBILE PHONES IS NOT A FORM OF COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT Embed from Getty Images ------------------------- In my first year of teaching, I took a Year 9 science class. They were a really great bunch of kids but they were also very sociable. When students are carrying out a science practical, particularly if you are a new teacher, it’s sometimes necessary to quickly stop the class and give an additional instruction. I found it hard to get theirattention.
So I brought a stopclock to class to measure the time between my first request and gaining the attention of the class. If the class took place before break, lunch or the end of the day, I would keep the whole class back for an equivalent amount of time. I think an experienced teacher had suggested it but it never sat well with me because it was a form of _collective punishment_. Students who had stopped and listened as soon as I asked were being kept back with the ones who ignored me to keep chatting. And that was unfair. Soon, my school introduced a new, whole-school behaviour policy. For the first time, I was given training in basic classroom management techniques. The training combined with the policy meant that I never had to use collective punishment again and I didn’t look back. In _The Truth about Teaching_,
my book for new teachers, I describe effective classroom management strategies and advise against collective punishment. So I am inclined to agree with a call in today’s _The Age_ for a ban on collective punishment and would add that schools also need consistent policies on behaviour and teachers need training in effective classroom management techniques. However, there is a revealing aside in the article. Jonathon Sargeant, a senior lecturer in inclusive education and classroom management at the Australian Catholic University, uses it as a vehicle to both criticise sanctions more generally and to describe Victoria’s upcoming mobile phone ban as collective punishment. The fact that education lecturers tend to be against any kind of sanction, no matter how fair or mild, coupled with the almost universal use of sanctions in the real-world of schools illustrates the ideology-practice gap between university education departments and schools. This prevents effective training in classroom management and better research into how schools can effectively manage behaviour. The idea that a mobile phone ban is a form of collective punishment is absurd. It’s like suggesting that a suburban speed limit of 50 kph is a form of collective punishment or a ban on drinking alcohol in a public space is a form of collective punishment. Yet it is precisely this kind of concept creepthat we
see again and again in education discussions. It takes legitimate concern over one issue and attempts to channel this against a quite different issue in order to further some ideological agenda.Greg Ashman
Uncategorized
Leave a
comment
July 11, 2019
2 Minutes
POSTS NAVIGATION
Older posts
Search for:
BLOG STATS
* 1,264,568 hits
SUPPORT THIS BLOG
Send $5 AUD to support original content or an amount you decideBUY MY BOOK
UK Amazon
US Amazon
Aus Book Depository
EDUCATION AND THE INDIVIDUALVideo Player
https://youtu.be/sezOBdXcdIM00:00
00:00
00:00
Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.EXPLICIT TEACHING
Video Player
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMjSYi9EbbA&t=1142s00:00
00:00
00:00
Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. PROJECT-BASED LEARNINGVideo Player
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOFqo-V4w4800:00
00:00
00:00
Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume. FOLLOW BLOG VIA EMAIL Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.Follow
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTERMy Tweets
LIKE ME ON FACEBOOK
> Like me on FacebookTOP POSTS & PAGES
* 5 principles of education * What is explicit instruction? * Why knowledge beats critical pedagogy * We don't need no Sir Ken Robinson * When project-based learning works * New review suggests education schools are failing to train new teachers to teach reading effectively * Surface structure, deep structure and pseudo-deep structure * Is Maths Pathway evidence-based? * Where is the evidence to support differentiation? * Who won the paradigm wars?RSS FEEDS
* RSS - Posts
* RSS - Comments
Advertisements
Report this ad
Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.Filling the pail
Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.Post to
Cancel
Report this ad
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: CookiePolicy
* Follow
*
* Filling the pail
* Customize
* Follow
* Sign up
* Log in
* Report this content * Manage subscriptions* Collapse this bar
Details
Copyright © 2024 ArchiveBay.com. All rights reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | DMCA | 2021 | Feedback | Advertising | RSS 2.0