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Dr Kerry Hempenstall provides a paper noting multiple aspects of teaching and learning effectiveness.
It illustrates clearly the need to note perceptions or 'mindsets' alongside statistics and research - and notes the 'Matthew Effect' linked to ability to read early:
Alessi (1988) surveyed 50 school psychologists, proposing five possible factors that could explain lack of learning.
5. Physical and/or psychological problems affecting the child.
The school psychologists produced 5,000 reports on children’s learning problems in that school year. These were later coded to determine to what factors their reports assigned the students’ educational problems. The attributions in their reports as causes of failure to learn were:
1. Curriculum factors? None.
2. Inappropriate teaching and behavior management practices? None.
3. School administrative factors? None.
4. Parent and home factors? 10–20%.
5. Factors within the child? 100%.
These two findings are surprising given that schools are considered the teaching arm of the community. There is no question that a great deal of expectation rests on the school system. However, it could be that the task of success for all appears to those within it as an impossible attainment for a school system, at least with the resources the community is prepared to devote to the task. Perhaps the responses above are simply an understandably defensive response to a situation in which those in the education system come to terms with their inability to achieve all the community’s goals. Alternatively, it could be that teachers have a different perspective to that of the rest of the community regarding the process through which learning occurs.
Last edited by debbie on Wed Jan 15, 2014 1:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Heward (2003) argues that the failure of the profession to attend to research has led to 10 misconceptions about teaching that have become entrenched and that distract teachers from effective approaches to teaching struggling students. The misconceptions are:
1. Structured curricula impede true learning.
2. Teaching discrete skills trivializes education and ignores the whole child.
3. Drill and practice limits students’ deep understanding and dulls their creativity.
4. Teachers do not need to (and/or cannot, should not) measure student performance.
5. Students must be internally motivated to really learn.
6. Building students’ self-esteem is a teacher’s primary goal.
7. Teaching students with disabilities requires unending patience.
What Does Empirical Research Contribute to the Failure-To-Learn Discussion?
The problems with basic skills begin early but become entrenched. Contrary to the hope that initial slow progress is merely a maturational lag to be redressed by a developmental spurt at some later date, typically, even relatively minor delays tend to become increasingly major over time (Stanovich, 1993). It appears that problems in basic educational skills, commencing early in an individual’s life, can have snowballing negative effects, and the consequences are felt over a lifetime and in numerous domains of the individual’s life. By what mechanism might this occur?
Sequence of Events
Several studies, such as that by Farkas and Beron (2001), have noted that students entering school with underdeveloped vocabularies are highly likely to fail in their basic skill development, yet they also found the effects could be countered by intensive early school-based assistance. Lyon (2001b) pointed out that such vocabulary deficits are more likely among disadvantaged children whose parents may be unable to provide them with the early literacy experiences that provide many other students with a flying start. These experiences include reading to children, but even earlier major differences in language were noted by Hart and Risley (1995) in the amount and quality of conversation between parents and children from professional, working class, and welfare families.
Arguably, the area of literacy development, and in particular, initial progress in reading, represents the fulcrum upon which students’ educational progress balances. Of great concern is not only the continuing struggles of slow starters, but also the potentially widening gap between slow starters and fast starters. There is ample evidence (America Reads, 2001; Ceci, 1991) that students who do not make good initial progress in learning to read find it increasingly difficult to ever master the process. Stanovich (1986, 1988b, 1993) outlined a model in which problems with early phonological skills lead to a downward spiral where all other school skills and even higher cognitive skills are eventually affected by slow reading development. This effect may not apply to all students who struggle and should not be confused with a view that it is a student’s internal deficit that prevents their achievement of success.
Arguably, the area of literacy development, and in particular, initial progress in reading, represents the fulcrum upon which students’ educational progress balances.
Stanovich (1986) used the label Matthew Effect (after the Gospel according to St. Matthew) to describe how, commencing at the initial stages of reading, the rich tend to become richer and the poor become poorer. Children with a clear understanding of the sound structure of spoken words (phonological awareness) are well placed to make sense of our alphabetic system. Their rapid development of spelling-to-sound correspondences allows the development of independent reading, high levels of practice, and the subsequent fluency that is critical for comprehension and enjoyment of reading.
Moats (1996) also argued that it is largely the initial insensitivity to word structure that undermines students’ capacity to learn the code of written English without focussed instruction. This fundamental deficit consequently inhibits the learning of word meanings, reading comprehension, spelling, written expression, and even the motivation to engage in subsequent language- based learning. In their study, Chapman, Tunmer, and Prochnow (2000) reported a negative self-concept among struggling readers arising within the first two years of their schooling.
