Educational Readings
By Allan Alach
The list is shorter this week (do I hear sighs
of relief?) as my brain has gone AWOL….
I welcome suggested articles, so if you come
across a gem, email it to me at allan.alach@ihug.co.nz.
This week’s homework!
Does size matter?
Article on class sizes written for a Canadian
readership but as usual applicable all over.
‘Mr.
Biased Columnist points out that places like Finland, Korea, Singapore (among
others) have class sizes that are larger than in Alberta, and still perform
better on PISA (this is fact). What he deliberately neglects to tell us (Logical fallacy of Omission – Stacking the Deck)
though, is that teachers in those countries spend far less time in front of
students than we do in North America.’
Parsing The Unintelligible Stefan Pryor
Article about the inability/unwillingness of an
Education Commissioner to speak plain English when discussing education. You
will, of course, note the similarity with language used by similar people in
your country.
‘The
model that we established for evaluation with the inclusion of teacher
observations of student learning indicators to making sure that we are looking
at student outcomes and other features — that was
arrived at by consensus through our Performance Evaluation Advisory Council.’
From failing to killing writing: computer based grading.
.JPG) |
| Computer testing |
The ultimate nightmare, the death of creative
writing.
‘Our
students’ writing has “something
the tests and machines will never be able to measure,” and
it is now the duty of all writing teachers to make known the art of human assessment of writing.’
Debunking the Left Brain and Right Brain Myth
‘There
is a common belief in many management and popular psychology circles that
a person’s creative ability is determined
by which part of their brain is more active. People often refer to people who
work in the creative industries or find it easy to come up with ideas as “Right-brained”,
whereas people who are more methodical, logical or process-focused are “Left
Brained”. I’m here to show you why these
terms should be ignored, and give you more of an insight into how the brain
actually comes up with ideas.’
Inquiry-Based Instruction Explores, Then Explains
‘It
is common for lessons to follow an "Explain-before-Explore" model,
which includes reviewing previous work, introducing a new concept, modeling
that concept, and then student practice with the concept in a controlled,
prescriptive exercise. The goal is for students to be able to replicate
solution methods or to parrot what was told to them. With the Explain-first
model, ask yourself, how are you challenging students to think deeply every day
about science or mathematics? Alternately, an
"Explore-before-Explain" instructional model allows students to
grapple with the ideas and skills within a concept before the concept is thoroughly
discussed and described.’
The Art of Thinking Like a Scientist
‘Through
the arts, students learn to observe, visualize, manipulate materials, and
develop the
creative confidence to imagine new possibilities. These skills and
competencies are also essential to scientific thinking and provide a strong
argument for transforming STEM education by integrating the arts.’
Innovation: Are You a Gardener or an Architect?
“Integrative
Thinking is the ability to constructively face the tensions of opposing models,
and instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generating a creative
solution of the tensions in the form of a new model that contains elements of
the individual models, but is superior to each.”
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