Educational Pyschology #2

Sadker, David. "Gender Equality: Still Knocking at the Classroom Door." Educational Leadership56 (1999)

I am a gender biased teacher. I give lots of negative and positive attention to the boys in my class, but leave the girls on the sidelines. I need to give more positive reinforcement to those who are doing what they are supposed to be doing. I discovered this because I read the article “Gender Equality: Still Knocking at the Classroom.” Gender equality despite all the news reports to the contrary is still a major issue in the classroom today. This article outlines 10 updates on the battle for gender equality emphasizing such things as the widening technology gap between male and females, the preference of males to get the majority of attention, and the fact that males are stereotyped too and need to receive individual encouragement rather than just be treated as rowdy boys. I think a number of these are interesting to educational policy makers and should be looked into, like how perhaps the technology gap is a reflection of video games. However, as a teacher, I think the most important one to look at is the positive and negative attention we give to males over females. I know that the best girls in my class I don’t give enough attention to because I am always yelling at the boys. I need to call on girls more, but because I think they are shy, I don’t do it.

In terms of the classroom segregation debate, coming from Notre Dame, I know my perceptions on gender bias are a bit different than the typical college student. Notre Dame is Catholic and at Notre Dame, all the halls are gender segregated. There is no option to live in the same hall as women, and women cannot even stay in the hall after midnight on weekdays and 2:00 on weekends. Gender Segregation is the norm at this school, and I loved it. Sure I didn’t have many good girl friends, but my hall was very close-knit with male camaraderie. We were the Knights of Keenan Hall and our lives were free from a lot of the drama that co-ed halls fall into. It was a brotherhood and I know many people who loved it.

Although this Hall life was created because of the conservative desire to keep the genders separated, it did have the positive effect of building brotherhood. I don’t know if this brotherhood could have been built in a co-ed hall. However, I do think that this separation led to a number of problems with the hook-up culture at Notre Dame. Girls were seen as something you tried to get on the weekends and treated as prizes. A lot of times real positive relationships were not built between the genders, especially if you came from a single-sex Catholic school. Those who came from the public schools were a little bit better at the interactions. I think there are some benefits to gender segregation, I think it allows boys and girls to focus on what really matters. But it can come at a cost of learning how to interact with the other gender, which might be too high of a cost.

Educational Pyschology #1

Osborne, Jason. "Testing Sterotype Threat: Does Anxiety Explain Race and Sex Differences in Achievement." Contemporary Educational Pyschology 26 (2001): 291-310. Web.

This article explains who gender or racial stereotypes actually effect students and contribute to the achievement gap. This article specifically outline the idea of anxiety and how when students are aware of stereotypes about their gender or racial backgrounds they actually tend to fulfill these stereotypes. Thus, stereotypes are in fact a self-fulfilling philosophy. This is caused by the students who become aware of their stereotypes becoming psychologically anxious and feel that they do not have the ability to succeed. Since knowledge is such a psychological issue, the fact that these students no longer believe that they will succeed makes the students not succeed.

As a teacher this makes perfect sense to me. A big factor in whether or a not a child will succeed is whether they are confident in their ability to succeed. A kid with no confidence does not do well. A kid with high confidence learns better. Thus, if a kid is anxious about the fact that no one like him succeeds in math, then that kid will not succeed in math. It therefore becomes important for teachers to dispel as many of these myths and stereotypes as possible and have children believe that they can succeed. This is tough because you want the kids to not be complacent, and one way you do this is by showing them statistics about the school and their stereotypes and what will happen if they don’t do work. Its important to light a fire underneath them and get them to work. However, I think this catch-22 can be avoided if you simply explain that the statisitics are wrong and that hard-work can prove them wrong. Nothing is set in stone, therefore if they work hard they can break the stereotypes.

Learning Theory Article #2

Jones, Shelley. "Culturally Responsive Instruction." Leadership (2007): 14+. Web.

The article, “Culturally Responsive Instruction” by Shelley Jones overviews the teaching style of CRSBI, culturally responsive, standards based instruction. There are five components to CRSBI: Caring, Communication, Curriculum, Instruction, and Standards Based Instruction. All of these components are equally valued in the teaching-style, and this teaching style that empowers students intellectually, emotionally, socially, and politically. By using this teaching style, teachers and administrators can help to close the achievement gap that exists in America’s education system.

Caring is the simple idea of showing support and a genuine interest in the success of the students. Communication means both communication with the parents and the administration but also teaching what is proper communication to the students. Curriculum refers to the incorporation of cultural aspects. Instruction means trying pedagogies in order to accommodate to the student’s learning styles. Finally, Standards based refers to the idea of keeping instruction aligned to state or national standards.

Overall, I find this article enlightening in the fact that cultural responsive theory only contains one aspect about the culture. The other 4 elements of this are non-culturally sensitive, meaning caring or communication. So as a teacher it is just as important to be caring and have good communication as to be culturally sensitive. This can be taken to mean two things. One, since communication is very important for effective teachers, then cultural inclusion is equally as important. Second, it could mean that in order to be an effective teacher that is culturally responsive, the teacher can simply be caring and have good communication. These are things that will transcend cultural backgrounds and make them be able to connect with students of different backgrounds. Either way, it is important for teachers to implement the pedagogies of this discussed in this article in order to improve their teaching effectiveness.

Learning Theory Article #1

Gordon, Mordechai. "Toward a Pragmatic Discourse of Constructivism: Reflectiosn on Lessons from Practice." Educational Studies 45 (2009): 39-58.

This article gives an overview of the teaching idea of constructivism. The exact idea of constructivism has many different definitions, depending on the theorist. However, all constructivist theories revolve around the idea that knowledge is not independent of human knowledge or free of value. This means that knowledge is something that humans create, not discover. Thus, the role of teachings should be to facilitate student creation of this knowledge. Knowledge is not something that is learned from a text-book, it is built through student actions and interactions. Thus, teachers need to be aware of how knowledge is created, if they wish to use practices that are must conducive to having their students become knowledgeable. Now, this article shows that there are many different theories about how the idea of Constructivism actually plays out in the classroom. The ironic thing is that it concludes by asking for a constructivist discussion about how to use constructivism. It doesn’t give out any specific answers about how to use constructivism or what form it should take, but he does think that the knowledge of constructivism is still under construction.

As for the classroom, I find the idea that knowledge is created to be very applicable. Students need to have a part in creating their own knowledge, they need to be invested in the material and applying it to their own lives. It is very similar to the differences in pedagogies competition we did for an earlier group work. One group actually constructed knowledge through a play, while the other group simply learned the story through direct instruction. This is one way in which Constructivism can lead to better student internalization of the knowledge. Since, they created the knowledge they actually will retain that knowledge. Another good use of constructivism is inquiry based learning. The students will need to discover their learning objectives. This is very student centered as raises the question of how much knowledge of the material the teacher really has to know. These are all very interesting ideas to how to improve learning in the classroom.

Multicultural Education

This article gives a brief update on where the education world currently stands on the topic of multicultural education. It shows that the idea of multicultural education is quite new to norms of education and because of this young age, there is a lot of contention about what multicultural education really looks like. This article shows that multicultural education can range from simply including a local hero into a lesson to full-programs that cater only to the needs of a group. However, they all follow the idea that since America comes from such a diverse background, its education should reflect this.

However, the idea of multicultural education in its confused young state seems almost disturbing and potentially dangerous to me. The first question that comes to mind is where do we draw the line on multicultural education. Should we discuss the culture of wiccas or Kitchen Catholics? Where should the line be drawn on who to include? Also I worry about the idea of separating children too much in order to get unique schooling. Pretty soon this separation turns into separate but equal. We want kids to value each other not their own. Thus, I think multicultural education needs to be apart of everyday life. It also needs just more clarification and details about how exactly multicultural education works if we hope to replicate the positive effects.

Understanding Unconscious Bias and Unintentional Racism, Jean Moule.

“A stereotype is a simplistic image or distorted truth about a person or group based on a prejudgment of habits, traits, abilities, or expectations.” Almost everyone has stereotypes and acts on these stereotypes whether they know it or not. In fact, it when these stereotypes and the actions that people associate with them are unconscious is when they can become especially dangerous. Our minds are wired in order to process large amounts of information quickly allowing us to assess situations and act accordingly. If our brains were not quick at these actions, our ancestors would have died out long ago. The brain is able to do this by creating stereotypes and then placing new situations and people into these stereotypes in order to process them. However, these stereotypes might not always come from credible sources, so they could be distorted. Thus, it is important for us to recognize these stereotypes rather than pretend they are not their. If we do not recognize that we have them we won’t be able to address them, and thus as the old adage goes you have to know what you don’t know.

I am curious as to what stereotypes there are for Hawaii and whether or not these stereotypes match reality. How different are they from black and latino in New York City. I know I have many stereotypes of people from different backgrounds, meaning educational, racial, and social. I judge people off of how they dress and how they speak. If I didn’t though, would I be able to survive in this world. Are stereotypes always bad, or do they serve a vital purpose.

The Negotiated Project Approach: Project-Based Learning without Leaving the Standards Behind

Before reading this article, I was really skeptical of project based learning. I had an experience with project based learning my senior year in high school, when they were trying to totally revamp our school and it was terrible. Furthermore, teaching senior project now has shown how it can be very problematic in terms of actually getting kids motivated and making sure they are learning. Its kind of difficult to teach standards in a project form, especially if the students have a wide-variety of options to choose from and grading can be even harder. How to access whether a project meets the criteria.

However, after reading this article and understanding that projects should not be semester based as both of my experiences with it are semester, I think there are some serious benefits to project based. The first is that it provides ownership. Ownership is a skill and knowledge that is severely lacking in Hawaii and low-income communities. The other is that college and the job world completely revolves around projects. Therefore, its important for us to teach these skills.

A self-determination approach to understanding students' motivation in project work

A self-determination approach to understanding students' motivation in project work

Woon Chia Liu ⁎, C.K. John Wang, Oon Seng Tan, Caroline Koh, Jessie Ee

This article highlighted the benefits of project-based education. It showed that a low-controlled environment high motivation is best way to satisfy students needs. How satisfy is defined is another question altogether. The bad news was that low self-determination and high controlled lead to less enjoyment and less improvement. Its still a question of how they define value over time. What aspects are going into value?

This information did not surprise me as I teach senior project and the kids who I can give the most self-determination are having the most fun. However, its not just as easy to do that, when the students do not have any base motivation skills before the class. I feel as if I spend 50 percent of my time just motivating these kids to do their work. Project based work depends on personal responsibility, something that many in my class simply lack. I think this might be an idealized situation as you don’t know what kind of school they are in. It could be one like the slab school, where the needed skills and mindset are already conducive to learning. Or it could be like Campbell where I have to ride them in order to get the work in. This could be just because I have terrible investment, but this whole article seems like it was written in an ivory tower.

Confronting Ableism

Ableism is the idea that there is a preferential way of learning and interaction. Ableism is the idea that there is preferred normal and then there is everything else. According to this idea it is best to walk rather than be in a wheelchair, read rather than listen, spell rather than use a spellchecker. This article wants us to stop seeing disability in a negative light and intend see it is a uniqueness in our students that is not meant to be overcome but instead exploited. The article then goes through some guide-lines for effective special education teaching.

This argument about disability being a blessing falls under the same argument that we should see being obese as being beautiful or bad vision forcing good listening skills. I am saying that we should not value the person for they are a person, but we should not pretend to ourselves that having bad vision, being handicap, or being obese is a good thing. I think people can often make these statements in order to make themselves sound accepting towards others and enlightened but we need to ask ourselves, “if there was a magic button that would mean no one would ever have bad eyes again, would you push it?” Yes, I would. If you could push this button and no-one would ever have down syndrome, would you push it. Absolutely. This is the world as it is, not the world as it should be, and having those traits are not beneficial to their existence. However, we should recognize that they all have something to contribute, something that makes them valuable and we need to find this, but lets not belittle them by saying their flaws are their strengths.

Moore Chapter 3

Moore’s Chapter 3, “Setting Goals, and Objectives,” from Effective Instructional strategies examines how teachers should decide exactly what they should teach, how the students will learn it, and how the students will prove that they know it. In order to know exactly what goals and objectives teachers should set for their students, they need to know the level at which their students are starting. From this point, the teacher can plan appropriate goals of learning growth. Several factors determine the starting level of students. Some students can have special education needs, while others could be extremely limited in English proficiency. However, students may also come to the teacher as extremely gifted and thereby require their own differentiation.

The objective should be a statement of what the students are expected to be able to do after instruction. Since the students will require attention, the objectives must be able to include students from multiple levels. They must also set exactly what skills and knowledge students must show as result of instruction. They must be measurable. When they are measurable they build student and teacher accountability. This way objectives make sure learning is actually occurring.

Instruction must contain three elements, expected behavior and/or product, specific conditions, and a rubric. Communication and execution of these objectives are all required for successful learning. Furthermore, good objectives follow a taxonomy of objectives that moves up the difficulty scale. This is helpful for differentiation. These taxonomies exist for cognitive development, meaning blooms scale, and affective domains meaning the students attitude and emotions. This affective domain includes personal skills like making value judgments and organization. The third domain is psychomotor domain which relates to the development of muscular abilities including sports, music, art and vocational skills. Thus, standards keep teachers and students accountable and objectives are how teacher seek to actually meet these standards.

This chapters focus supports and aligns to everything we have learned as a teacher. Accountability is the watchword these days. It’s a vital concept for both education and the marketplace today. Assuming teachers care about standards or have some incentive to care about standards, standards provide the goal that students should strive for. As long as the student can internalize the rationale for why they must know this, and assuming it is in fact geared to their level, standards provide the goal and organization for students. It makes the whole process transparent to both the teacher and the student. I have learned that in the class the most important thing is to be transparent with your instructions and goals. Students who end up guessing get sick of being wrong and will either give up or act out. However, the problem with this comes down to practically. Sure all teachers would love to be able to incorporate this ideas and make sure their objectives are working up the scales. But finding the time to do that is a taller order. It just like most things gets better with practice, I assume.

Cultural Captial

DiMaggio, Paul. "Cultural Captial and School Success: The impact of status culture particiaption on the grades of U.S. High Schools." American Sociological Review 47 (1982): 189-201.

This article, Cultural Capital and School Success: The Impact of Status culture participation on the grades of U.S. High school students by Paul DiMaggio, assesses the impact of a students’ cultural capital on their grades. This theory revolves around Weber’s idea of status culture, where a certain group will monopolize personal ties, shared conventions, cultural traits, tastes and styles. Those who do not have these traits will not be allowed within the status group. Thus, when these groups form at the top of the social hierarchy it is does to differentiate themselves form the lower classes. If a certain level of education or job field becomes associated with this group then it is excluded to other groups. Thus, the idea of going to college, or going to some ivy league enters the realm of impossible in the students eyes. The most important factors that the article found in accessing the students level of cultural capital is the Father’s education and the head of the household’s occupation. This article then goes on to analyze through studies how true this hypothesis is. After some complex statistics, the article finds out that this original theory of status culture does not transcend generations. Thus, if a parent has an academic advantage due to their cultural background, there is only a 30% of passing this down to their sons, and a 60% for daughters.

I think these findings demonstrate why it is so important for Teach for America teachers to be in the classroom at every level. The fact that children don’t necessary correlate to the success of their parents shows that there are many influences on a students cultural capital rather than just their parents. It can come from their interaction with different peers and different adults. However, as students do need to be learning the cultural capital, Teach for America teachers who often come from this elite culture provide first hand interaction with this type of culture for students. This is why I think its important for teachers not to change how they dress, how they interact, and how they talk from their elite education experience to teaching. Students need to be exposed to this kind of behavior so that they can begin to incorporate it in their own behavior. This I think is an under-published benefit of Teach for America. Students are interacting with people who come from a privileged background, so not only does this make those with the privileged background want to change the education system, but it also opens up the world of possibility to the students who have these teachers.

Teaching to ELL

Joseph, Furner M. "Teach Mathematics: Strategies to Reach All Students." Intervention in School and Clinic 41.1 (2005):

This article Teach Mathematics: Strategies to Reach all Students, goes through 20 tangible ways to teach math to ELL students. These techniques vary from the simple #9 “Explain directions clearly, and repeat key terms” to the more complex ones like #16 “Concretize math concepts with total physical response. The article described these strategies as a grab-bag, designed to give teachers flexibility in using a variation of different techniques in order to get their ELL students to learn. However, a majority of these techniques have some common threads. First, none of these strategies require separate exclusive ELL time. These strategies are meant to be used to teach math, rather than transform the math class into an extension of English class. Second, most of these strategies try and use multiple sensory learning in order to get kids who might not be able to understand with the ears and tongues to be able to understand with their eyes and hands. Third, many of these strategies also try to build connections to their native cultures and math. This way they help to create a welcoming environment where the kids will be feel comfortable than be vulnerable in a new environment.

Even though this article is about math, I found that most of principles and practices mentioned in it could be applied in any classroom. For example #7, Encouraging students to think aloud when solving word problems. Word problems exist in many subject fields, from Science to Social Studies. #3 Applying problems to real-life situations helps with anybody, not just ELL students. #17 Creating word banks would be helpful for any class that depends of key definitions. Therefore, I found this article helpful for any teacher with ELL students.

However, I think the article suffers from some problems because if you craft your lessons so much to the needs of the ELL students, won’t this negatively affect those who don’t need the work as ELL. This assumes that certain ways of teaching that are better than others. For example if you can teach a lesson through inductive simulations, this will be better than just a straight lecture. Thus, if you teach your math with these ELL students in mind doesn’t that come at the expense of the kids who already speak English. I am in particular thinking of the example of using the Abacus to help Chinese students relate to math. This seems like the teacher is planning his/her lesson around the individual ELL learner.

I assume that this will not always be the case, and often times there is no clear single best way of learning, so an ELL strategy could work for the entire class. Also, times the lesson plan could be differentiated so that the learning for the ELL kids will not come at the other’s expense.

List of Web resources

Algebra Henrico County Virginia Google Search it for lots of good infomration

ELA – teenink.com – teen stories that are free

ELA - readwritethink.com lesson planning for ELA, might have other places

Math - purplemath.com Descriptions of math, breaks down difficult concepts

Football: ndnation.com

General

Youtube: Berc group

Whole brain teaching: upbeat way of teaching, good review

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 5:

Chapter 5 covers the various components of direct teaching and in particular emphasizes how exposition teaching with interactive teaching is the most effective method of direct instruction. Direct Instruction uses deductive knowledge, where the Teacher directs the students to the knowledge they are supposed to uncover. It is a more traditional model of teaching, where the primary actor is the Teacher who either conveys information to the student and checks for understanding through questioning. This varies from indirect instruction in that the later uses inductive knowledge where the student is the central actor unlocking the material.

Direct instruction is better for covering the lower levels of blooms and is very efficient at conveying high levels of information. It is efficient not only in how much knowledge is conveyed in a teaching period, but is also fairly simple to plan for the teacher. The teacher simply has to have a background of the knowledge and be able to show that knowledge to the students in a clear manner. However, direct instruction suffers from weaknesses in that it has the lowest level of retention, and it doesn’t use the critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity of the student. Thus, when the student does not use these thinking skills, the student is often bored and unmotivated. Thus, the student does not retain the material. These shortfalls can be offset through interacting with the students by using effective questioning. However, it still does not produce the same level of retention as indirect teaching.

I find it interesting that at the college level this in the only type of teaching that professors employ. This not only explains why the freshmen year of college is so difficult, but why so many students don’t retain the knowledge from lectures. I can’t remember a single lecture, and the only materials I do vaguely remember were from my essays or I used in presentations and debates. I wonder if either I adapted and started using all these higher processes in my head, or if I could have been much smarter in college if they used these techniques.

Chapter 6

Indirect reading is the opposite to direct teaching in that is focuses on a student centered discovery process while the directed learning emphasizes a more teacher oriented learning process. This means that the student is using inductive reasoning to figure out the learning objectives rather than learning the verbatim of the teacher. This also means that because the student is using higher-level thought processes the student will retain the material at a higher rate than direct teaching and will be more engaged in the classroom setting. Indirect teaching can occur in many different ways including discussions, discovery activities and problem solving. Here the students are using whatever knowledge they already have or is presented to unlock the objectives.

Although inquiry, indirect, inductive learning does lead to a better student interaction with the material and thus a higher retention rate of the material, indirect learning also requires a large amount of creativity on the part of the teacher. Therefore, this might mean a less time intensive workday, this sort of teaching requires much more prior preparation on the part of the teacher to produce the lesson plans for this way of learning. A teacher can simply not be expected to produce this type of indirect knowledge everyday, unless it is a skill that really gets better with time.

I also think that the best sorts of discussion or problem solving start with a limited background. Students need to understand the gist of the material before truly unlocking it in this indirect learning. Therefore, the best way to teach is probably with a combination of both direct and indirect reading.

Chapter 11: The Skillful Teacher

This chapter focused on illustrating various types of models for teaching. A model of teaching is a pattern of instruction that is recognizable and consistent. There are many types of models, from Group Investigation to the Synectics model of teaching, all of which provide different way of indirect teaching approaches. However, I found this chapter much less approachable than the chapters from “Effective Instructional Strategies.” This I think stemmed from both the denser less student friendly voice of the chapter and the fact that they only used geometry as an example for these models. I was lost how to apply these to a class like English, much less a class as ambiguous as Senior Project. As the chapter said on pg 251, models of teaching are not the same as patterns of instruction. Models of teaching are much more theory oriented while the latter deals with in class room activates. Thus, this chapter seems more focused on the theory behind the practical patterns of instruction in direct and indirect teaching. However, since I am doing on-the-job training, I seem much more engaged in the stuff that is directly relevant for me. I don’t want to debate theories in an ivory tower, I want stuff that will help me teach tomorrow, because I need it, and my students need it.

Annotated Bibliography for Assessment and Standard

Greer, L. (2001). Does changing the method of assessment of a module improve the performance of a student? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 141 (2)

This article performs two tasks in that first summarizes past research on the rationale behind assessments in order to create a context, for its second task: the presentation of a study showing that tests which provided feedback lead to higher student performance than tests which did not. Past research has shown that the assessment process can be utilized to serve multiple purposes, including “reporting on student’s achievements, providing feedback to enable students to improve their understanding, diagnosing misunderstanding, expressing clearly the goals of the curriculum, improving the teacher’s methods. This study looks at the second and third of these reasons, as it tries to assess ways in which assessments provide feedback to the students in order to improve their understanding. The study found that students who receive feedback that directly to the mistakes and then were retested on that material did better on the tests than the group, which did not undergo this formative examination.

I think this study proves the point that assessments are more than a fire-and-forget test that students should focus on passing. Tests are a valuable learning experience, and provide both the teacher and the student with clear indications of what the student does not know. However, the test must be structured in a systematic way to ensure that the mistakes are evident to both the grader and the student. If a student fails a multiple choice test, the teacher doesn’t know why the student missed the information, the teacher just knows that the student did not know the right answer. Without knowing the exact mistake, the teacher cannot hope to improve that student’s understanding of the material. This is why tests that force the student to show the work for math and science, or essays for social studies, are a much better way to assess if the student understands the material. However, this does raise the problem of time on the teacher’s part, and determining where 100 students made mistakes will require much more time and effort than simply marking a multiple choice bubble wrong. I guess that’s why they pay us the big bucks though.

Howard, W., Crenshaw, M., No child left behind: a successful implementation. Education, 126 (3), 403-408

This controlled group experiment tests whether a school who implements the policies recommended by No Child Left Behind actually result in an improvement in student performance. This South Carolina study tests whether the NCLB-based model: Turning Good Teachers into Great Teachers: Turning Green Apples into Red Apples can lift a school out of the unsatisfactory rating. The study examines two very similar schools, one who implements the program and one that does not. This model implemented a number of changes including training the principal in effective leadership skills, training teachers to align their curriculum to South Carolina standards, bringing in the community, extending hours to weekends and after school, and introducing new technologies. Following this model, the “experimental school” improved to an average rating, while the control school remained unsatisfactory.

Although this study seems to prove that the model does work to improve schools, it is not specific enough to know which changes lead to the improvements. Since so many variable were changed between the control and the experimental it is hard to determine which is the causal agent. Perhaps the improvement is simply a result of extending the hours, and aligning the curriculum to standards did not change anything. Aligning the curriculum to the standards could have actually decreased the student performance, but all the other changes improved student performance so much that it outweighed the loss. In order to make this study more relevant and replicable it is important to narrow the change variables to just one, or else we cannot make any workable conclusions. However, I also believe that in terms of education reform, there is no one silver bullet to improving test results. In order to turn around schools, a lot needs to be changed, just like this study showed.