199 Ideas: Enhancing Learning Experiences

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Again, the central questions involve looking deeply at student work, not trying to provide reasons psychological, social, economic that the student might not be producing strong academic work. This approach often uses student artwork to help teachers identify student strengths. Other ways to foster collaboration include opportunities to score and discuss student essays or to compare and discuss student portfolios Wiske, Collaborative discussions become most valuable when two teachers are jointly involved in sense-making and understanding of the phenomena of learning e.

Every day these two algebra teachers had to discuss and agree on what to do next. Overall, two major themes emerge from studies of teacher collaborations: These findings are consistent with analyses of situated learning and discourse Greeno et al. Action research represents another approach to enhancing teacher learning by proposing ideas to a community of learners. Action research is an approach to professional development in which, typically, teachers spend 1 or more years working on classroom-based research projects.

While action research has multiple forms and purposes, it is an important way for teachers to improve their teaching and their curricula, and there is also an assumption that what teachers learn through this process can be shared with others Noffke, Action research contributes to sustained teacher learning and becomes a way for teachers to teach other teachers Feldman, Ideally, active engagement in research on teaching and learning also helps set the stage for understanding the implications of new theories of how people learn.

Between the meetings they try out pedagogical and curricular ideas from the group.

Improving teaching and learning: ideas for heads of department

They then report to the group on successes and failures and critically analyze the implementation of the ideas. In addition to generating and sharing of pedagogical content knowledge, the PTARG teachers came to deeper understandings of their subject area Feldman, ; see also Hollingsworth, , on work with urban literacy teachers. Action research can also be tailored to the level of expertise and the needs of the teachers, especially if the teachers set the goals for the research and work collaboratively.

When action research is conducted in a collaborative mode among teachers, it fosters the growth of learning communities. In fact, some of these communities have flourished for as many as 20 years, such as the Philadelphia Teachers Learning Cooperative and the Classroom Action Research Network Feldman, ; Hollingsworth, ; Cochran-Smith and Lytle, Unfortunately, the use of action research as a model of sustained teacher learning is hampered by lack of time and other resources.

Teachers in the United States are generally not provided with paid time for such professional activities as action research. To provide that time would require financial resources that are not available to most school districts. As a result, teachers either engage in action research on their own time, as part of credit-bearing courses, or as part of separately funded projects.

While teachers have claimed that they have incorporated action research into their practice in an informal manner, there is little research that has examined what that means. The sustainability of action research is also hampered by the difference between practitioner research and academic research. If academicians are to encourage teachers to do action research, they need to have models that fit the temporal flow of school teaching Feldman and Atkin, and rely on forms of validity that are appropriate to research in the practical domain Feldman, ; Cochran-Smith and Lytle, Preservice programs that prepare new teachers will play an especially important role during the next few decades Darling-Hammond, First, teacher education can be an undergraduate major or a program that is in addition to an academic major.

Second, there can be an expectation that the program can be completed within the traditional 4 years of undergraduate study or that it is a 5-year or masters degree program as advocated by the Holmes Group Third, programs for initial teacher preparation can be university or college based or located primarily in the field. Finally, programs can differ as to whether they are primarily academic programs or whether their main purpose is certification or licensing.

While programs can vary in these ways, they tend to have several components in common: Four philosophical traditions of practice have dominated teacher education in the twentieth century Zeichner and Liston, Although these traditions can act as useful heuristics for understanding the guiding principles of particular teacher education programs, it is important to realize that most programs do not fit neatly within the categories Zeichner, And even though these traditions underlie teacher education programs, students are often not aware of them explicitly Zeichner and Liston, The actual experiences of many prospective teachers often obscure the philosophical or ideological notions that guide their preparatory years, which color evaluations of the quality of preservice experiences see below.

The components of teacher education programs—collections of courses, field experiences, and student teaching—tend to be disjointed Goodlad, ; they are often taught or overseen by people who have little ongoing communication with each other. Even when the components are efficiently organized, there may be no shared philosophical base among the faculty. Moreover, grading policies in college classes can undercut collaboration, and students rarely have a chance to form teams who stay together for a significant portion of their education unlike the team approach to problembased learning in medical schools see, e.

Political factors have strong effects on teacher education. The regulations often interfere with attempts. The majority of teachers are educated in state colleges and universities, the budgets of which are controlled by state legislators and governors, and they teach in public schools that are affected by local politics through school boards, as well as by the same statewide influences Elmore and Sykes, It is not surprising that these many forces do not lead to the most innovative teacher education programs.

The traditional program arrangement foundations courses, developmental psychology sequence, methods courses, and field experiences offers disconnected courses that novices are expected to pull together into some meaningful, coherent whole. Although teachers are supposed to excite students about learning, teacher preparation methods courses are often lectures and recitation. The need to fulfill certification requirements and degree requirements leads to programs that provide little depth in subject matter or in educational studies, such as research on teaching and learning.

They also complain that methods courses are time consuming and without intellectual substance. When methods courses explore the theory and research bases for instructional methods and curricula, the students complain that they are not oriented enough toward practice.

These problems in preservice education impede lifelong learning in at least two ways. First, a message is sent to prospective teachers that research in education, whether on teaching or learning, has little to do with schooling and, therefore, that they do not need to learn about the findings from research.

Second, the importance of viewing themselves as subject-matter experts is not emphasized to teachers—especially teachers in the early and middle grades: Even teachers who attend institutions that provide a strong preparation for teaching face major challenges after they graduate. They need to make the transition from a world dominated primarily by college courses, with only some supervised teaching experiences, to a world in which they are the teachers; hence, they face the challenge of transferring what they have learned. Yet even with strong levels of initial learning, transfer does not happen immediately nor automatically see Chapter 3.

People often need help in order to use relevant knowledge that they have acquired, and they usually need feedback and reflection so that they can try out and adapt their previously acquired skills and knowledge in new environments. These environments—the schools—have an extremely important effect on the beliefs, knowledge, and skills that new teachers will draw on. Many of the schools that teachers enter are organized in ways that are not consistent with new developments in the science of learning. When student teachers enter their first classrooms, the instructional methods, curricula, and resources can be very different from the ones they learned about in teacher education programs.

So although prospective teachers are often anxious to begin their student teaching and find it the most satisfying aspect of their teacher preparation Hollins, , the dissonance between this experience and their course work supports the belief that educational theory and research have little to do with classroom practice. New teachers are often given the most challenging assignments—more students with special educational needs, the greatest number of class preparations some outside of their field of expertise , and many extracurricular duties—and they are usually asked to take on these responsibilities with little or no support from administrators or senior colleagues.

It is not surprising that turnover among new teachers is extremely high, particularly in the first 3 years of teaching.

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Teachers are key to enhancing learning in schools. In order to teach in a manner consistent with new theories of learning, extensive learning opportunities for teachers are required. We assume that what is known about learning applies to teachers as well as their students. Yet teacher learning is a relatively new topic of research, so there is not a great deal of data about it.

Much of what constitutes the typical approaches to formal teacher professional development are antithetical to what research findings indicate as promoting effective learning. These kinds of activities have been accomplished by creating opportunities for shared experiences and discourse around shared texts and data about student learning, and focus on shared decisionmaking.


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The learning communities of teachers also allow for differing kinds of background training and for variations in their readiness to learn. Successful programs involve teachers in learning activities that are similar to ones that they will use with their students. Many learning opportunities for teachers fall short when viewed from the perspectives of being learner, knowledge, assessment, and community centered. But there are examples of successful programs that appear to fit these conditions quite well.

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Many programs for preservice teachers also fall short of providing the kinds of learning experiences suggested by new developments in the science of learning. They need well-defined goals for learning, beliefs about how people learn that are grounded in theory, and a rigorous academic curriculum that emphasizes depth of understanding. In particular, the dissonance between what is taught in college courses and what happens in classrooms can lead to later rejection of educational research and theory by teachers.

This is due, in part, to the ways in which they have been taught in the disciplines and how their colleagues teach. Although teachers are urged to use student-centered, constructivist, depth-versus-breadth approaches in their education classes, new teachers often see traditional teaching approaches in use at the college level and in the classroom next door.

Beginning teachers are especially influenced by the nature of the schools in which they begin their teaching. Successful learning for teachers requires a continuum of coordinated efforts that range from preservice education to early teaching to opportunities for lifelong development as professionals. Creating such opportunities, built out of the knowledge base from the science of learning, represents a major challenge, but it is not an impossible task.

First released in the Spring of , How People Learn has been expanded to show how the theories and insights from the original book can translate into actions and practice, now making a real connection between classroom activities and learning behavior. This edition includes far-reaching suggestions for research that could increase the impact that classroom teaching has on actual learning. Like the original edition, this book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions.

When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non-experts? What can teachers and schools do-with curricula, classroom settings, and teaching methods--to help children learn most effectively? New evidence from many branches of science has significantly added to our understanding of what it means to know, from the neural processes that occur during learning to the influence of culture on what people see and absorb. How People Learn examines these findings and their implications for what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess what our children learn.

The book uses exemplary teaching to illustrate how approaches based on what we now know result in in-depth learning. This new knowledge calls into question concepts and practices firmly entrenched in our current education system. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website. Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

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Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available. Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free? Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released. Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition Chapter: Looking for other ways to read this? The National Academies Press. Page Share Cite. Login or Register to save! How learning actually changes the physical structure of the brain. How existing knowledge affects what people notice and how they learn.

What the thought processes of experts tell us about how to teach. The amazing learning potential of infants. The relationship of classroom learning and everyday settings of community and workplace. Learning needs and opportunities for teachers. A realistic look at the role of technology in education. Toward better Conceptualizations and Measures. Education Researcher 38 3 Toward a Theory of Teacher Community. The Teachers College Record, , Knowledge building in teacher professional learning communities: Focus of meeting matters.

199 Ideas: Enhancing Learning Experiences

Teaching and Teacher Education, 59, pp. Professional communities and the work of high school teaching. University of Chicago Press. Teacher professional learning and development. International Academy of Education. Teaching and Teacher Education Possibly one of my favourite posts Harry. Very excited about taking a firmer hand over these principles on a more local basis.

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Education Around the World. July 2, Author: Perhaps it is unsurprising therefore that: Professional learning towards what? Dylan Wiliam has argued that: Three approaches stand out: Collaborating over what to teach Fundamental questions can be addressed more productively by subject teams. Collaborating over how to improve teaching The aim is not to force teachers to teach identically, but to catalyse reflection by individual teachers and the sharing of effective approaches.

There are two stages: Creating a common measure Collective reflection requires something in common, which every teacher can reflect upon. Collective reflection With these shared tools we can examine the variation in student responses and try to explain how it has come about: How did each teacher explain the topic?

How did they allocate time differently? What metaphors did they use when students became stuck? By beginning with a question: Two techniques lend themselves to this in particular: Question prompts might include: Where did most students struggle? What did most students manage well? How do student answers differ between classes?