> Now lets see. Is it fair to say that there are demonstratedly
> effective "best practices" that work with all kinds of students?
> Maybe even a lot of them?
> But 90+ classrooms in the US do not use them, because.......
I'm not sure that I would assert that we know what are _best_ practices.
I have seen excellent practices in a number of classrooms in Canada and
England, and I have read about others in the U.S. and Australia. In most
of these cases, some - or all - of the values of inquiry, dialogue and
community seem to be at work. But I think it would be both unwise and
premature to claim that these values are the _best_ for all teachers +
students.
Last spring I visited the "High Achieving Classrooms for Minority
Students" group in Denver (of which Phillip White is a member).
They first carried out a study of 40 4th and 5th grade classrooms
in which they sought the features that distinguished the high from
the low scoring classrooms. Here are some important common features
that distinguished the teachers in the high scoring classrooms:
a) "In addition to checking students' comprehension, teachers in the high
scoring classrooms were more likely to engage students in talking about
books in a conversational manner. In addition,there was a wider variety
of activities, often cooperative, available to students ... that
encouraged them to think about the text they were reading"
b) "The teachers in the high scoring classrooms made writing instruction
a priority. They allowed time for it to occur, both as a focus of
instruction and as a part of other lessons.
There was also substantial variation in the kind of writing that occurred
in the high scoring classrooms, but all produced whole texts."
c) "The teachers in the high scoring classrooms had high and explicit
expectations of their students, and they had confidence in their
students' ability to meet those expectations. ... For some teachers,
this attitude was conveyed in their formal classroom demeanor. Other
teachers conveyed the same purposefulness in a friendly but business-like
attention to the tasks at hand."
However, they concluded: "It became apparent that no list of "effective
practices" could provide a prescription for good teaching. Some
classrooms were very much alike in the practices they used, yet students
in one made strong gains on outcome measures and students in another did
not. ... There is no doubt that a teacher could "adopt" all of the
practices we have found to be associated with high performing classrooms,
and still not obtain strong results." (pp.11-13)
In the following year, they carried out an intensive year-long
observational study of three of the most successful of the earlier sample
and found that they organized their classrooms on quite different principles.
According to my reading of their conclusioons, it certainly wasn't
inquiry or open-ended dialogue, as I have described them, that were the
common features. However, "community" was obviously important. They write:
"We found that, however different they were from each other, they were
alike in their ability to create a coherent environment of learning for
their students, a community in which students felt free to take risks.
The teachers were also alike in the authority with which they conducted
themselves. They provided a great deal of individual attention to
students and they had high expectations of everyone in the class." (p.16)
The question is: would these classes have been even better if their
teachers had been committed to dialogic inquiry, both in the practices of
learning and teaching and in the teachers' own deliberate and conscious
stance as learners? I should like to think so. But, as has already been
suggested in earlier messages in this discussion, there are a number of
qualifications.
1. Perhaps one or more of them was already committed to an inquiring
stance, but interpreted this in a way very different from what I
understand by that term. As I have argued before, different classes can
enact these values in quite different ways and I certainly wouldn't want
to prescribe an "inquiry method".
2. As Jay suggested earlier, the values of inquiry and open-ended
dialogue are pretty diametrically opposed to the "philosophies" of many
teachers and of a substantial proportion of administrators, parents, etc.
Even if we were sure that these values would lead to more worthwhile
experiences for students, they cannot be imposed on unwilling teachers.
More collaborative approaches are needed, through jointly undertaken
inquiries (see below), inservice experiences that encourage teachers to
become more systematic observers in their classrooms and, of course,
through making teachers' actual preservice preparation experiences
congruent with the values that are preached.
Only when we have more experience of attempting all these approaches
shall we know with more confidence whether dialogic inquiry _is_ the best
approach and, even then, I believe it will only be best for teachers who
are whole-heartedly committed to these values.
3. On Wed, 31 Dec 1997, Bill Barowy raised another problem:
> Many students alone (up to grade 12) do not have the abilities to answer
> the questions they ask, at least in science. I come to this conclusion
> after judging science fairs at local and regional levels (the kids who make
> it to the regional levels do seem to 'have the ability', but I have often
> detected strong apprenticeship in those projects) and by participating in
> high school and middle school classrooms. I think as a result some
> teachers' experiments into more student-centered learning often fail,
> especially first attempts. But this is not the students fault either -
> many have never had the chance to exercise inquiry skills.
>
> And neither have teachers. Action research is very attractive as a process
> to help bootstrap the system to a new set of norms, yet it would appear
> that the mentor in the action research process must possess both a strong
> understanding of the content area and have some good models of the
> teaching/learning process. Especially if the teacher has not participated
> in educational research. What do you think? Does this make sense?
Two points here: In many cases, neither teacher nor students have
experienced an inquiry approach, since this is currently the exception
rather than the rule. So getting started _is_ both difficult and scary.
In high school, in particular, teachers have typically absorbed the idea
that they _should_ know all the answers to students' questions and the
students have been led to think so too. So, as Bill says, it may not be
profitable to encourage students to explore questions to which the
teacher does not know the answer - unless s/he is willing to become a
co-inquirer with the students.
In these circumstances, an outsider (a colleague, an advisor from the
district, or a university researcher) may be able to provide
encouragement, advice and support. Bill suggests that such a mentor
needs to have a good understanding of the content area as well as ideas
about ways of organizing activities to promote inquiry. I'm not sure
that content area expertise is necessary; in fact, there may be
advantages in the mentor not being an expert, so that the project
involves a more equal collaboration between teacher and 'mentor'.
I have gone on long enough - though I realize that I haven't really
answered Mike's question!
Reference: Clarke, Mark A., Davis, Alan, & Rhodes Lynn K. with Baker,
Elaine D. (1996) "Creating coherence: High achieving classrooms for
minority students". University of Colorado at Denver.
Perhaps Phillip can add to/qualify my impressions.
Gordon Wells, gwells who-is-at oise.utoronto.ca
OISE/University of Toronto
http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/~ctd/DICEP/
Visit NETWORKS, the new on-line journal for teacher research, at:
http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/~ctd/networks/