I suppose I should post something, anything, since it's already getting late into the week. I don't have the time or energy to do something long or involved. It's interesting why. I actually have more time now than in the past, in terms of school, since I have the day off, after test day yesterday. But I don't really have the day off, I'm about to get lunch and head back over because I might be behind on practice hours.
In any case, I took the little bit of time I had to study intensively on a non-school homework topic that I've been really interested in for a while. Perhaps some would find it strange that after a long bout of intense intellectual work I'd take a break by doing some more intense intellectual work, but I have penchant and love of research, especially research that can be practically applied.
I have a lead on something that might be very helpful for people who want to change when change is hard. And in researching that and how to be effectively trained in that, I ran across some information that triggered a deeper and longer lasting obsession, that started somewhere around the time I started taking classes to be a teacher.
This obsession, which seems rational to me, has to do with teacher training. It blows my mind that there has not been systematic research into what methods of teacher training are most effective. It just seems insane. Or perhaps there is good research out there, but it's just remained in obscurity. My guess is there are small pockets of good research but they probably need more funding to be conclusive.
I suppose it's also possible that it's difficult and hotly debated, what constitutes the good student outcomes that would have to be measured.
In any case, it kind of enrages me, that there are so many institutions training teachers, which I see as one of the most important jobs, and they are doing it based on... I don't know what. unscientific theories, philosophies, feelings. I think we have pretty robust research on what leads to learning, though unfortunately a lot of that focuses on the stuff that's easy to measure, like test scores, and not on some things that may be more important, like social, moral, and deep learning outcomes.
But I don't think it would be too difficult to test really, I think it's possible, and I think the results would be damming. In fact, I think that's why I got into a huff in the first place, was looking for research on what was good training, and finding basically that research shows most of the methods used for training teachers have little to no impact on teacher effectiveness. They are nice theory, nice curriculum. Nice ideas, that if applied correctly, would yield good teaching. But the fact seems to be that telling people, even in detail, what good teaching is, does not yield good teachers.
From my informal and super brief review of the science of obtaining mastering or at least high proficiency in a skill, what is needed is repeated practice, with clear, measurable feedback, and mentoring by experts who can observe the trainee practicing the skill and give directed advice. There are other things that seem to help as well, practicing the various teaching and managing skills in structured peer groups with review and feedback, but the basic idea is the same.
And in just about any training program you can think of, the amount of that you get is tiny. Even my graduate program, which had a lot of time practicing, had very little of that time monitored in a way that I could get immediate or prompt feedback either from a mentor or form some kind of rubric that I could be scored on objectively, while teaching. My overworked, lovely professors only had time for that occasionally.
I could have tried to do a self assessment rubric myself, but I had no time. I was learning theory stuff and writing papers and losing sleep over how stressful student teaching was.
I think if you would look at Finland, or some country like that, you still wouldn't find an answer, you'd just find that it was a highly respected profession, so they had pick of the litter for teachers and so they could get people who already just happened to have the skills and drive necessary to be good.
That's not fair. If you have the desire to teach, you should have the chance to be trained in a way that gives you the skills for effectiveness, in teaching and in creating an environment that doesn't cause premature greying. It's not magic, it's technique and skills and knowledge.
Innate predisposition may get you the gold medal in the Olympics, but good training will get 99% of the population to competition level in their local town or state.
well, I was going to write something short and that did not happen. I'm very... um. "passionate" about this subject.
I really hope someone else does the obvious thing of observing, analyzing, and breaking down all the skills of the most effective teachers and then goes about designing a program that trains people in those skills in a way that is tested scientifically for effectiveness. You know, just following up with the graduates of the program, and determining that there is a large impact on teacher performance, and student performance, because of the training.
Because if someone else doesn't do it, then maybe I'll have to, and it sounds like way too much work, and I'm certainly not the best person for the job.
I'm looking at Gottman's work as a template: he very carefully observed and coded the interactions between couples, determined the "masters and disasters" in relationships, and determined the key factors of each group. They he went about trying to teach people how to avoid the behavior of the disasters and learn that of the masters. And he measured the results of his attempts: at first he was not very effective, but with help and experimentation, he got to a place where he was quite effective.
By the end, he could tell with about 90% accuracy, from something like a 15 minute conversation between the couple, if they would divorce, stay together, or grow emotionally distant but not quite divorce. And he had a short seminar that had some of the highest rates of marital relation improvement and maintenance of improvement over time, of any program out there. Perhaps the highest? I don't know, but it seems likely it was the highest and longest lasting for such a short intervention/training.
On of the things he discovered in his research was that a significant portion of the common knowledge about the field (of relationship advice) was wrong. Just simply wrong, but nobody had taken the time to research stringently the advice they were peddling. I think there's a similar issue with educational systems. especially in the gap between research results and actual implementation.
Well, I've gone on way too long now.
Normal disclaimers apply to the above stuff: I'm just an armchair philosopher, actually putting it into practice is way more challenging. There are a lot of wonderful people who also care deeply about this, doing huge amounts of work and pouring their heart into training new teachers. And I'm sure some of them are doing a great job, though it's impossible to know who, because we're not following graduates of teacher programs around and measuring their increase in effectiveness.
But I do know there are a lot of very wise and kind expert teachers, who are training new teachers, since those are the kind that I looked for. I know they've got good advice too. I just don't know how much of it will actually translate into me moving towards mastery in teaching. That has to do with deliberate practice, measurement, feedback, in a loop, ideally according to a plan that has been honed over time based on objectively observed outcomes that account for other variables skewing the results. That we don't have, as far as I know, and I think the world would be a better place if we did. Maybe it exists as individual consultants?
anyhoo, goodbye! this conversation can't end in my head because I don't have an answer, but it has to end on paper so I can go about the rest of my crazy day, week, and year.
the end
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