If you, like me, listen to a lot of audio books, this post from Forbes explains Google’s new effort to provide these resources and compares costs with Amazon. Short summary – Google is a bit less expensive if you purchase books individually. If you are willing to commit to a plan (12 or 24 per year), the cost per book is better from Amazon. Book from both sources can be listened to using your Echo (a big deal for me),
The Atlantic recently included an article criticizing the educational version of personalization promoted and supported by Mark and Chan Zuckerberg because it relies on dated research.
And for good reason: The results from the 1984 study underlying it have essentially never been seen in modern research on public schools.
The “dated” research was described by B. Bloom as the two-sigma challenge and it sets as a challenge the search for instructional methods that could come close to matching the achievement of students working with a tutor. Individualized instruction with a dedicated result is proposed as the benchmark against which other instructional tactics could be prepared. Then as now, this optimal experience would be financially impractical for nearly all students. The personnel costs involved in education is another variable that has not changed with time. I cite Bloom and the educational tactics I see as related to this position (mastery learning) myself so I take some offense at the characterization of the notion of “aging research”. Scholars criticize research mainly for issues of methodology and not the date of publication. The article does remark on the content used in the research and the number of schools/participants involved in the research. Let me say that the value of tutors has been substantiated repeatedly (see Hattie data on most effective educational tactics). The connection between tutoring and other approaches to personalization does add some additional complexity, but there have been multiple large-scale reviews of mastery learning as well.
Personalization is hot in education. Unfortunately, it is an ambiguous term and it is easy to interpret it based on personal experiences. The kind of personalization emphasized by mastery advocates involves recognizing that individuals will learn at different rates based on aptitude and background knowledge. Pushing a group ahead at a fixed pace often fails to take these differences into account boring the more advanced students and frustrating the weaker students. With the weaker students, moving ahead without mastery further contributes to the limitations of existing knowledge increasing these students problems in the future. It makes some sense to me that because certain content is more hierarchical than other content areas, mastery before progress matters more in some situations than others.
Zuckerberg’s version of personalization takes advantage of technology to address individual differences. Some have a gut level reaction to this idea without investigating any further. When I advocate for similar ideas, I suggest that educators do not have sufficient time to work with individual students and certain uses of technology free them from certain traditional duties allowing them greater flexibility in how they spend “teacher time”. This basic idea shares some overlap with the popular and somehow more accepted idea of flipped classrooms. Why use class time for presentations when class time could be more productively spent working with students. In the case of mastery learning, why not allow technology to handle certain instructional tasks (presentation, practice) and apply these tasks at the level required by individual students and allow the teacher to rotate from individual spending his or her time with those students most needing assistance?
How such approaches are used can easily be mischaracterized. There is nothing to say that these tactics must be used in all content areas all of the time. This is basically the idea of a flexed approach.
I write more about these ideas in a discussion of mastery learning and the Kahn Academy.
Larry Ferlazzo comments on the same Atlantic article. I doubt that Bloom or any of the rest of us who have since conducted research on mastery concepts would suggest that this is a silver bullet. Mastery learning addresses a specific problem in educational practice – different students are at different points and would best be served if met at these different points. If providing this form of individualization is not possible for a teacher, it makes sense to search for other means.
If you are arguing the case for computer science and computational thinking, you may find this EdSurge post of value. The comments argue the value of CS and some of the issues that limit course and experience offerings in school. The position taken is a little over the top for my taste so my promotion of this article is mostly for the sake of some of the data and resources that are included. Comparing the preparation of teachers in the areas of reading and math with the resources devoted to preparing teachers to provide instruction in the area of computer science is trying a little too hard.
Here is an observation. STEM and CS advocates seem to be presently enjoying a time in the sun. Politicians, parents and celebrities say they believe “coding for all” is important. What is the basis for this enthusiasm? Is this enthusiasm related to a commitment to provide new resources or is this another issue that schools are somehow supposed to fund a way to address?
It is not that I am against learning to program? Having this skill was of great benefit to me personally because it was an unusual skill for someone who did the academic work I did to be able to program. When I find myself engaged in discussions about this topic, I often propose that educational time has limits and ask what existing commitments should be cut to make room for a new commitment. Consider that those who support arts education and physical education already must fight to maintain some piece of the time and resources available for educating students.
Aside from this reality, the question of why certain skills appeal to those willing to pressure schools or in one direction or another is interesting. Why programming? Why not intelligent information consumption allowing citizens to evaluate the quality of information they consume? There are more of us who must refuse to be manipulated by fake news than who will ever program and this type of skill is looking to be essential to our democracy. I think a sound case could be made for a greater commitment to writing skills. Writing can take so many different forms and it is my personal opinion that “writing to explain” receives far too little attention. Maybe these would be examples of skills that should be emphasized while other related skills (other forms of writing, other goals for reading) should receive less attention.
There is a related question I think should be answered. When is the time to devote part of the time available to a specific skill? Are K-12 experiences necessary to encourage young students to pursue skill development at the college level? Again, which vocational or thinking skills should get this treatment and how are such decisions made? For example, I think I can make a strong argument that the profession of programmer needs less attention than the profession of mental health worker. When in K12 are students informed of career opportunities in the mental health field or taught basic skills that might be applied when interacting with a depressed friend?
So, this is the way I tend to frame this issue. How should the K-12 curriculum be allocated to address the many possible needs that exist?
Tech using educators are probably familiar with FERPA. This legal position requires that schools (through secondary) protect student data from outside sources. My experience with FERPA also stipulates that as a college professor I not release data on adult students to their parents without student approval.
FERPA has come again as applied to online instructional and management systems. According to the terms of services of at least one such system, the system:
by posting or submitting Member Content to this Site, you grant K12 and its affiliates and licensees the right to use, reproduce, display, perform, adapt, modify, distribute, have distributed, and promote the content in any form, anywhere and for any purpose.
The article I reference above stated that:
“Member content” was defined as information the child posted on certain areas of the site, registration data, and other forms of student personally identifiable information (PII).
Some parents objected and the school (a private institution) argued that the parents had options allowing the school to use the service.
At the time the school was found to be using acceptable practices at the time, but now has been warned that higher standards are in place.
This has interesting implications for companies wanting to provide such services.
I wonder about this situation. I know that many have objected to the wording of the TOS of other online companies believing that the companies had the right to use their content (e.g., images). My recollection of such situations was that the companies had no such intentions, but inserted language in the TOS as a legal protection. I wonder if this is a similar situation.
It seems fashionable for educational pundits to put down direct instruction in favor of approaches described as based on the principles of constructivism (typically project based learning, problem based learning, inquiry approaches, discovery). Those objecting to direct instruction do so in contradiction to the massive amount of research suggesting otherwise. The Review of Educational Research, the preeminent source for summaries of educational research, just published a review of research from the past 50 years again demonstrating the greater effectiveness of direct instruction. This publication has yet to appear in your local college library, but is available online (the service is called onlinefirst). I assume affiliation with a library offering access to journals online is necessary for access.
According to the review, direction instruction in contrast to other philosophical models of instruction involves:
the theory underlying DI lies in opposition to developmental approaches, constructivism, and theories of learning styles, which assume that students’ ability to learn depends on their developmental stage, their ability to construct or derive understandings, or their own unique approach to learning. Instead, DI assumes all students can learn new material when (a) they have mastered prerequisite knowledge and skills and (b) the instruction is unambiguous.
The publication will eventually appear as:
Stockard, J., Wood. T.W., Coughlin, C. & Khoury, C.R. (2018). The effectiveness of direct instruction curricula: A meta-analysis of a half century of research. Review of Educational Research.
Stockard has a related paper available online.
This post was prompted by a related analysis appearing on the Blue Skunk blog.
In his post, Doug Johnson notes that he doesn’t have the readership that he used to have. I guess my experience has been similar. My analysis of the downturn in readership would argue that the changes in what readers read involve an increase in the use of Facebook and Twitter and a decrease in the use of RSS readers. Facebook and Twitter are simply easier and those readers who read blog entries tend to encounter links from Twitter rather than from an RSS reader that they have taken the time to configure. In sum, reading blogs takes too much work.
One can look at this change from the position of the reader or the writer. I think writers who no longer write have lost a lot. I guess I regard this as more significant than any decline in reading that has occurred.
