I found this interesting to read.The Cultural Myths and Realities of Classroom Teaching and Learning: A Personal Journey
GRAHAM NUTHALL
University of Canterbury
In this article, I argue that classroom teaching is structured by ritualized routines supported by widely held myths about learning and ability that are acquired through our common experiences as students. These ritualized routines and supporting myths are sustained not only by everyone’s common experience of schooling, but by teacher education practices, the ways we evaluate teachers’ classroom performance, and many common types of educational research. My own research on teaching over the last 45 years has produced a number of apparently contradictory and puzzling findings that have progressively led me to understand the nature and power of these routines and myths. While ritualized routines are necessary to allow a teacher to manage the experiences of 20–30 students simultaneously, they also explain why individual student experience and learning remain largely invisible to teachers. The problem is to find ways to stand outside the ritualized routines and myths to identify how they control what we perceive, believe, and do about reforming teaching and learning.
Teachers can teach very hard - but this does not necessarily equate to learners learning well, or all learners learning well.
In other words, it is all too easy to be duped into a 'feel good factor' when providing various practices in the classroom based on accepted formats of teaching and learning, and based on how hard we feel that we are working, or how exciting we are making the learning, or engaging the learners - but there is far more to effective teaching than we might think.
It is good to read a piece where someone of considerable experience and longevity in the field of research fully reflects on a lifetime's work at various stages along the journey.
Here is the conclusion to the piece - and I'm worried that if readers don't get to the end of the article, they might miss this very revealing description:
I've added the red colouring in the text above.Let me finish by describing a teacher who has attempted to step outside the standard routines of teaching and create a new kind of classroom. It illustrates how even innovative teachers can still be caught up in and misled by the dominant myths.
Mrs. Middleton is an enthusiastic and energetic fifth-grade teacher. She believes students are better motivated if they can choose their own learning activities. Each year she prepares a wide range of resources and trains her students to plan and organize their use of these resources effectively.
On one of the days that we observed and recorded in her classroom, the students were working on a science project on space. Each student had chosen her own research activity from a set of activities that Mrs. Middleton had carefully designed (using Bloom’s taxonomy) to challenge students’ research and thinking skills.
Rebecca was sitting at her table, surrounded by library books, looking for
information about the differences between the surface features of Mars and the earth. Rebecca loves school. She especially loves this kind of project, and her research report was filled with accurate information and detailed drawings. Rebecca already knew a lot about space from the time when her father taught her (at 5 years old) to recite the names of all the planets in order.
Joel was sitting at his desk with one library book and the title of his
project (‘‘The Life of an Astronaut’’) written across the top of his report. He
appeared to be busily searching the book for relevant information, but 20
min later he had written nothing underneath his title.
Occasionally he went up to the teacher and complained about being interrupted by his neighbors (our observations showed these interruptions never occurred). On other occasions, he asked permission and disappeared from the room for 5 min or more.
Joel spent long periods at his table just sitting and staring at his book. He never completed work. Whenever the teacher asked to see it, he
had left it at home, accidentally lost it, or promised to complete it for
homework.
Mrs. Middleton spends most of her time walking round the class monitoring
progress and helping as required. Through the routines they have adapted to their classroom, Mrs. Middleton and her students know exactly
what to expect of each other. Without such routines she could not manage
28 students simultaneously and know at a glance whether they were doing
what they were supposed to be doing.
Mrs. Middleton believes Rebecca and Joel are serious students. Since
neither asks for help, she satisfies herself that they are working well by
glancing in their direction from time to time. She ‘‘knows’’ that Joel is a lowability student and expects little of him. She is happy to see him reading a book. He knows what she expects of him and how to meet those expectations.
Mrs. Middleton also ‘‘knows’’ that Rebecca is a high-ability student
and expects to see her using several books simultaneously and writing a
report that is many pages long. Rebecca understands these expectations
and has learned how to meet them with the least effort.
Mrs. Middleton is a successful teacher. The students like her and try to
please her. The principal is impressed with the efficient way she organizes
and manages an individualized program. He proudly tells parents that she runs a program that caters to the individual needs of each student.
But because Mrs. Middleton believes that the busy classroom is the learning classroom and that students’ behavior is a function of their ability she has no idea what Joel or Rebecca are actually learning.
Joel is not reading any of the text in the book in front of him, but looking at the pictures.
Rebecca knew all that she wrote in her report before this unit on space began.
Day by day it is like this.
The smoothly organized routines are played out. The students are constantly moving around, busy at their tasks. Mrs. Middleton sees what she expects to see. Joel and Rebecca know how to meet her
different expectations equally well.
But Joel is headed for serious failure and Rebecca for outstanding success.
Mrs. Middleton was shocked when we showed her data from the
achievement tests and interviews that revealed how the more able students had learned no more during the science unit than students she believed (on the basis of standardized test results) were less able.
She assumed our evidence was somehow aberrant or mistaken. After all, she knew the students, she knew how hard they worked, she knew how successful her program was. Such is the power of culture and the routines and myths by which teachers structure and understand daily life in their classrooms.
Sorry about the strange formatting above, this is a result of 'copy and paste' and trying to sort out the formatting (unsuccessfully).
