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Secrets of amazing teachers: What both sides of the education debate get wrong

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Re: Secrets of amazing teachers: What both sides of the education debate get wrong

#21

Post by nmrm »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #18
HarryHirsch wrote: post #3

Oh dear. When a student answers that 7/12 is 1.5 and doesn't immediately see why this couldn't possibly be true you know that the problem is rote learning of algorithms. Whoever gives such an answer does not connect classroom learning with the real world, he does not understand what the answer means. You see this often, even in university students. The problem isn't solved with more accountability or more teacher aut…

> When a student answers that 7/12 is 1.5 and doesn't immediately see why this couldn't possibly be true you know that the problem is rote learning of algorithms. This doesn't seem right. What algorithm did you learn in school that would produce 1.5 from 7/12?

Immediately means "without executing an entire algorithm".

Re: Secrets of amazing teachers: What both sides of the education debate get wrong

#22

Post by bostik »

I'm surprised by the tone of the comments so far. In the article I see a clear parallel between the example teacher doing things right, and the hacker mentality.

Think of it as an overall problem with code - how do you teach someone how to get good at debugging? A more generic version of that question may be simpler, but maybe even harder to answer: how do you teach general problem solving skills?

The teacher in the article was doing nothing less than debugging erroneous logic as applied by her students. Not just for the procedural errors, but for the underlying faults which allowed the logical errors to manifest.

That's pretty hard core.

Re: Secrets of amazing teachers: What both sides of the education debate get wrong

#23

Post by thaumasiotes »

nmrm wrote: post #21
thaumasiotes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When a student answers that 7/12 is 1.5 and doesn't immediately see why this couldn't possibly be true you know that the problem is rote learning of algorithms. This doesn't seem right. What algorithm did you learn in school that would produce 1.5 from 7/12?

Immediately means "without executing an entire algorithm".

Perhaps, if the student had done some rote learning of algorithms, they wouldn't have come up with 1.5 at all.

Re: Secrets of amazing teachers: What both sides of the education debate get wrong

#24

Post by thaumasiotes »

21echoes wrote: post #10
HarryHirsch wrote: post #3

Oh dear. When a student answers that 7/12 is 1.5 and doesn't immediately see why this couldn't possibly be true you know that the problem is rote learning of algorithms. Whoever gives such an answer does not connect classroom learning with the real world, he does not understand what the answer means. You see this often, even in university students. The problem isn't solved with more accountability or more teacher aut…

or, as explained quite clearly in the article, a simple misunderstanding of symbols: the kid interpreted it as 12/7 instead of 7/12.

to be fair, that isn't necessarily a misunderstanding of symbols -- if you retested that kid several times, you might find him interpreting 7/12 as 12/7 and 12/7 also as 12/7, on the grounds that obviously you divide the larger number by the smaller number. That kind of "reasoning" is common, but amounts more to ignoring the symbols than misunderstanding them.

Re: Secrets of amazing teachers: What both sides of the education debate get wrong

#25

Post by aptwebapps »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #12
21echoes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or, as explained quite clearly in the article, a simple misunderstanding of symbols: the kid interpreted it as 12/7 instead of 7/12.

Two misunderstandings: the kid also thought that 1.5 means 1 remainder 5. That's a profound lack of knowledge, he does not understand decimal notation. If you do not know what these number symbols mean, how can you communicate using those symbols? It all degenerates into futile pattern matching.

I think you're being too extreme. It quite possible to have a less than complete grasp of something and write down the wrong answer. Heck, you can give the wrong answer even when you know something cold, all thought that's obviously not the case here. We don't know how much or how little attention the kid is putting into it and this is a 5th grader, after all.

I understand what you're getting at but some kids don't get all of this all at once in a blinding flash - they become more and more familiar with it over time.

Re: Secrets of amazing teachers: What both sides of the education debate get wrong

#26

Post by wmt »

Accountability is irrational if you are just enacting something someone told you to do, and autonomy with no feedback leads to random results.

The thing that teachers and schools need is more responsibility, more power to plan and decide how they teach, but still keeping an eye on the results.

The mentality of punishing schools with low scores will however not help. Beating the weak rarely makes them stronger. Give more resources and guidance for schools that are lacking behind, and award more autonomy for schools that work properly.

Re: Secrets of amazing teachers: What both sides of the education debate get wrong

#28

Post by tuukkah »

beloch wrote: post #19

It's true that some teachers have a special aptitude for the job. However, you can't rely on a few exceptional individuals to fix a system that is deficient by design. You need to change the average teacher. This article pays homage to the exceptional but does not address how to change what is typical. Compare teacher salaries to average salaries in countries with the highest academic performance on standardized test…

This. Change the average teacher. Require and provide them with a Master's degree in education (in primary schools) or in the subject matter together with a minor in education (in high schools). When they graduate, they will contain the nucleus of the expert teacher in them and will grow with experience. The feedback they get from the students (and parents) - no need for performance evaluations!

Why does autonomy work in Finland, as mentioned in the article? First, we have invested in the teacher training. Second, we have provided more resources to the schools with a more troubled student body. No need for the blame game that is the recent Global Education Reform Movement. Could you implement this in a US state similar to Finland such as Massachusetts, if not staight away in all of the US?

Re: Secrets of amazing teachers: What both sides of the education debate get wrong

#29

Post by cafard »

ams6110 wrote: post #14
afafsd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in my own experience, but let's face it, we were (I'm just gonna guess here) among the smart kids, and what works well for smart kids isn't necessarily what works well for the average or dumb kids. Maybe dumb kids learn more effectively through different methods.

In the article this jumped out at me: “From the moment our children step into a classroom,” Barack Obama said in 2007, “the single most important factor determining their achievement is not the color of their skin or where they come from; it’s not who their parents are or how much money they have. It’s who their teacher is.” That's just absolute nonsense or he was pandering to a constituency. Their parents and their…

There are or have been partial exceptions, but in general you are correct. I don't think that even the most expensive schools have consistent quality in the teaching staff.
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