Happy New Year and other holidays!
Here is my $0.11 contribution to the discussion on "best practices".
When I hear something about "best" of "effective" or "high quality" I think
about "best" for what, for whom, why, and what if somebody disagrees with
the answers?
After the fall semester is over a few of my students and I are engaged in an
open-ended critical thinking email discussion about their letter grades that
they don't like. The disgusting aspect of this socratic dialogue is that I
have keys of power -- however the issues are resolved, my word is the last
one. Meanwhile, it is their education and future that is at stake.
What do you think?
Eugene
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Eugene Matusov
Department of Educational Studies
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
Office phone: (302) 831-1266
Fax: (302) 831-4445
email: ematusov who-is-at udel.edu
web: http://www.ematusov.com
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>Mike asked:
>
>> 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/