What makes for efficient teaching? What makes for productivity? Humans are not machines, that can output X things for every Y hours put in. I can get two or three times as much done early in the day when I'm fresh, and sometimes I can't do something well at all in the afternoon when my brain is already fried. It's not a linear line. We need rest.
Much more than that, though. I recently listened to a chapter from a book on timing (by Dan Pink) that mentioned some research on team effectiveness, showing that productivity was not linear, but went from almost nothing, to very productive, starting right around the midpoint (when people realized, uh-oh, half the time is already gone). This was true for short-term as well as long term projects.
We're not logical creatures, and especially when it comes to motivation, our focus and energy, we are hugely governed by subconscious feelings, beliefs, impulses. The understanding and engineering of how this works is the business of effective leaders and teachers.
Whenever I start thinking educational theory (and I'm doing so now as I write essays for my Montessori Training) I get frustrated by the lack of effective systematized teacher training. On the other hand, I'm sure it's more difficult than it sounds. Bill Gates poured millions (hundreds of millions, I think) of dollars into education reform and got depressingly little results. Finland spent years nationally focused on developing education, and considers teaching prestigious enough to attract the people who are already really smart and effective. So while it clearly is a fixable problem, it's not an easy problem to fix.
That's looking at the problem in general though. Even on the micro-scale, I've yet to find any program that can turn someone into a good teacher.
Part of that is the same with any profession: you want to get good, you have to work at it with dedication and focus for a long time.
But there are some professions that seem to have the science of that down to a much higher degree. Sports is a great example. Because sports is so lucrative, there is a lot of money, energy and creativity that has gone into perfecting the science of physical performance. Coaches know what athletes need to do for super-high performance. Most professional athletes are at a really high level of performance, far above that of your average joe off the street. The difference between one top level athlete and another is tiny compared to average joe vs. any of them.
Part of that is innate ability, and they're good at scouting for that, but even without special innate ability, you can get up to really high levels of performance. You just won't be the star player.
In any case, the point is they've broken down everything that can be broken down, into specific skill sets, and they know how to train people for mastery of those skill sets. And they do train those people for mastery of those skill sets.
You can do this for any profession. There are some things you can't train, but mostly, you can.
Not only does teacher education not train you for mastery in it's skill-sets, it's not even clear on what the skill sets are.
The waters get muddied because some educational choices don't have to do with academic achievement. Is this method of behavior modification ethical? Is how we are treating children moral?
Also, there's different opinions on the purpose of education: are we just teaching children to earn a living? Do we want them to be kind and compassionate? Do we want them to value charity and helping others? Do we want them to value community and meaning? Do we encourage them to pursue their passions or try and force them into a generic mold? Do we focus on memorization and test taking or creativity and lateral thinking? All of these things take time and energy, which are finite resources, and the balance of where you're putting your time and energy determine the kind of education you impart.
So in a sense I suppose it's good that there are many different kinds of educational institutions, so people can find one that matches their values and concerns. Though perhaps even better would be to find one that matches their child.
In any case, I always come back to this question; what are the universal principals for education? Things that we know are most effective, not because of our personal bias, but because of high quality empirical research?
I feel like there is a huge amount of individuality in teaching, different styles and focuses, that don't really make things clearly better or worse, just different. And also, there are a huge number of pathways that lead to similar goals, and result in similar outcomes. And people fight tooth and nail about them, when the truth is they're both about the same.
And on the other hand, there is huge variance in teacher effectiveness, so there are obviously some things that do make a real difference.
One big problem is that experts are often not particularly good at explaining or even knowing why they are so good at their field. Their competence comes from a number of processes that are largely unconscious, and so they're not even aware of what they're doing so well. People then ask the experts for advice, and the advice given is often not very useful to the novices.
What's really needed is researchers, looking at expert teachers and objectively dissecting what all the best teachers do in common, AND then looking at different ways of teaching those skills, until they discover the most effective ways of training people in those skills.
There are a lot of different areas that are important for teaching, so that's probably going to be complex. Academic learning is just one important category. Management, motivation, inspiration, is another category, and at least as important. Instilling good values and character is one most people don't think much about, but for me it's equally important. And then there's just the day to day management of logistics, and basic safety and awareness.
It seems like the average person can become an average teacher, given persistent effort, even without specialized training. But what does it take to become a great teacher? Probably the answer is not so complex. Probably it's just the same thing for all professions: you keep working at it, with passion and persistence, you keep pushing yourself to grow, and don't let yourself fall into a rut of stagnation.
I don't have to worry about that quite yet, things are still too crazy to be comfortable enough to stagnate. But it's something to stay vigilant about.
This was maybe a boring tea for some of you? I'll post a short additional thing that may be more interesting, that's been sitting in my draft folder.
Merry Christmas ^_^
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