Research Based Effective Practices In Educating Students: Fill & Download for Free

The question posits a false dilemma. The correct statement is “college professors should be required to learn how to teach so that they can best share the expertise they developed as professionals in their field.”It is inexcusable that most colleges and universities do not require their instructors to learn the basics of instruction and to practice proven instructional systems design. Instructional design is a science. It is research based methodology that, when followed, optimizes the learning process. Students pay a fortune for a college education. Every hour they spend with a professor should be optimized to facilitate the greatest amount of learning and for that to happen, the professor must have the instructor’s skill set and body of knowledge - they need to know every trick in the box.It isn’t that hard. Part of my job is teaching an instructor training course (ITC) to engineers so that they can effectively and efficiently teach astronauts and flight controllers. It works. The result is students that learn what they need in less time.There’s some nonsense in some of the other answers that teaching in college is supposed to be different than teaching in high school. No one who has ever read a book on instructional design would spout such codswallop. There are differences in adult learners and child learners, but teaching is teaching.

Liberal, Progressive, and Outward-looking.I am pleasantly surprised by the new education policy. The NEP empowers students to pick and choose their academic journey rather than conforming to the set standards and norms. It also moves towards international standards with a focus on digital and research-based learning. There are many changes that I can talk about, but I will stick to ones that truly stand out for me.Academic Credits Systems: This is an excellent initiative that will allow students to learn at their own pace. They don’t have to worry about completing the whole course. They can collect credits, drop out, and return when they want (within permissible limit) to finish the course based on the minimum credits required. Additionally, they can transfer their credits across universities.4-year bachelors' degree: With a stage-wise distribution approach, the NEP makes every year of the bachelors’ degree count. After completion of 1st year, you get a Diploma, after 2nd an Advanced Diploma, after 3rd a Bachelor’s degree, and after 4th Bachelor’s degree with research specialization.Multi-disciplinary: The great change in the new policy is that you can mix and match subjects in higher education. Rather than picking predecided groupings, the students will have the freedom to pick the subjects they want. It is like building your own degree.Globalization of Education: Now, the top-rated foreign education institutes can open their colleges in India, while top-rated India educational institutes can go global. Of course, this will come at a price but it will also (hopefully) push Indian universities to compete with the best in the world. This will further help the globalization of the curriculum exposing talented Indian students to diverse subjects and courses.6% of GDP on education: Hope this actually happens. The words have been spoken. Let’s see how and where the money is deployed. But surely it is a welcome sign. Education is the most valuable asset that a country can develop.Having said that we need to see if the government implements the policy effectively. It is a bold and challenging policy and it needs competent people to execute it efficiently. I hope the government executes this as enthusiastically as they execute elections.Before I finish this post, here is the snapshot of NEP 2020 published by the Times of India.Major Reforms: School EducationBoard exams will be low stakes & test actual knowledge instead of rote learningMother tongue to be a medium of instruction till 5th gradeReport cards will be a comprehensive report on skills and capabilities instead of just marks and statementsNational mission to focus on basic literacy and basic numeracyMajor changes in the pedagogical structure of the curriculum with no rigid separation between streamsAll separations between vocational and academic and curricular and extra-curricular will also be removedMajor Reforms: Higher Education50% Gross Enrolment Ration by 2035Holistic and Multidisciplinary Education- Flexibility of SubjectsMultiple Entry/ExitUG Programme - 3 or 4 yearsPG program - 1 or 2 yearsIntegrated 5 year bachelor's/Master'sM Phil to be discontinuedCredit Transfer and Academic Bank of CreditsHEIs: Research Intensive/ Teaching Intensive Universities and Autonomous Degree-Granting CollegeModel Multidisciplinary Education and Research University (MERU)[1]Conclusion:In my opinion, the government’s approach to NEP is practical and prudent. They haven’t made any radical changes, but they have taken an important step towards modernization, globalization, and the liberalization of education.Footnotes[1] National Education Policy 2020: All You Need to Know - Times of India ►

As a 20+ year veteran teacher, what I observe is that many bright but disadvantaged students end up underperforming. That underperformance is directly a result of what is happening in America’s classrooms.Here are the two main culprits:I. Adherence to failed teaching philosophyConsider the fact that wealthy parents are more likely to take their children to museums……or national parks…… or book stores.Kids from economically advantaged backgrounds are more likely to be read to, to spend free time reading, to watch educational television. They are more likely to have cultural experiences that imprint knowledge into long term memory.Kids from less advantaged backgrounds tend to spend more time watching TV……and generally have fewer of the experiences that build up knowledge in long term memory. So they enter school at a deficit. That’s where current teaching models come into play.This requires a bit of context.The Traditional Model strongly emphasizes having an ordered learning environment where the teacher can transmit knowledge to the students. This model recognizes that learning is dependent of individual students focusing on specific tasks to learn specific material. When teachers demonstrate a skill and have students practice what the teacher demonstrates, they are using the traditional model of instruction.The Progressive Model places emphasis on inquiry learning. Instead of the teacher explaining or showing, the teacher’s job is to set up conditions where the student can explore an idea, usually in groups, and construct their own understanding. Experts who advocated the Progressive Model often touted “productive chaos” where students were moving about the classroom and sharing ideas. The key feature of this model is that knowledge is de-emphasized. As far back as the early 1900s, progressive educators were saying that it doesn’t matter if students know X because they can go to a library and look X up.22 years ago, when I was earned my first credential, my state of California had fully embraced the progressive model. My first experiences observing classrooms were a shock as almost every assignment was group work, called Cooperative Learning, with almost no individual assignments. Math instruction revolved around group learning projects. I never once saw students practicing times tables or what appeared to be math problems. My district had adopted the Mathland program that failed to teach even the most basic of mathematical skills.How did we get here?According to Chris Wolski, American schools have abandoned knowledge in favor of emotionalism. It’s certainly true that schools have abandoned the idea that transmitting knowledge is an important component of education.In the 1970s, sociologists Pierre Bourdieu, Basil Bernstein and Michael FD Young published Knowledge and Control, a work that argued that the traditional way of transmitting knowledge was actually an artificial construct by ruling elites designed to keep the working class down.The book raised questions rarely asked before about the basics of formal education: the curriculum, examinations, subjects, definitions of intelligence, the teacher’s authority. School knowledge, Young suggested, could be seen as a ruling-class construction designed to ensure working-class children failed and meekly took their places on factory assembly lines.The ideas expressed in Knowledge and Control appealed to a new generation of teachers who had gone to college during the height of the Counterculture movement. Young “hippie” teachers in K-12 and higher education were eager to implement something the opposite of what had been done traditionally.While every kid didn’t end up in a non-school, the de-emphasis on knowledge would end up harming the education of all students.As I was entering the profession, the general public came to understand that our educational system was generally failing our students. Teaching practices that de-emphasized knowledge and rote practice, shockingly, produced students with little knowledge and dismal skills. Parents, and most teachers, sought a more balanced approach to education. But even while parents and effective teachers wanted to step back from the progressive model, education professors and activists wanted to move even further from traditional teaching.One of the better ideas to come from the traditionalist camp was the idea of a Common Core of knowledge as proposed by English professor E. D. Hirsch, Jr.Hirsch is the author of numerous books such as Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children, and Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children from Failed Educational Theories. Through his writing Professor Hirsch popularized the idea of a Common Core of knowledge that all students should learn, and there was a push to implement such a Common Core of knowledge.Hirsche has used the tem Mathew Effect to describe what’s happening in education.In education, this refers to the accumulation of advantages those with knowledge have over those with less knowledge.As schools emphasize things like group work, critical thinking and technology, those who come to school with less knowledge fail to make the same progress as the students who come to school knowing lots of stuff.Eventually Michael FD Young, The counterculture class warrior who opposed traditional education would join ED Hirsch in pushing for a a re-emphasis on knowledge.Today, its author has changed sides in the knowledge wars. Like the American ED Hirsch, Young has become a guru for the growing number of teachers who argue that children need knowledge and lots of it. He broadly supports the former Education Secretary Michael Gove’s curriculum reforms restoring academic subjects to pre-eminence. Some quote his book Bringing Knowledge Back In (2008) as a sacred text, just as Knowledge and Control was to their parents’ generation. Schools should teach things that children can’t learn elsewhere, Young now argues. There’s no point in them otherwise.Since these groups roughly correspond to socioeconomic status, we can see that the Progressive Educational model with it’s deemphasis on knowledge and its overemphasis on soft skills advantages the economically advantaged over the economically disadvantaged.II. Chaotic classrooms harm learning of disadvantaged.I have a friend I’ll call Karen. Karen is an English teacher turned stay-at-home mom. Karen is the kind of liberal who gives money to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood and uses the word “Nazi” as an adjective when describing Republicans. She and her husband lived in the upscale Cherry Hill neighborhood of Denver, and sent their only child to the best public middle-school in the city. This school also receives students from a less affluent neighborhood.During his 6th and 7th grade school years, Karen would call me and tell be about the bullying and disruption going on at the school, about students screaming profanity in the hall, about students who weren’t even in the class entering the room simply to cause disruption.This year Karen and her husband, Anders, put their son in an elite (non-religious of course) private school. I was recently told how nice it was not to have students wandering the classroom all period either trying to copy answers or mess up your work, and to not have class interrupted with profanity fueled outbursts. That is a fine solution for a couple like Karen and Anders with one child and a high income.But what about the kids left behind? What about the kids who’s parents cannot possibly afford an elite private school?And I know this won’t be popular with some readers but… what about that kid in the picture above about to throw a desk across the room?Isn’t he being cheated as well? Doesn’t he deserve not just a better future, but a better present?As I’ve described the chaotic conditions that exist in classrooms in my previous answers, some readers have exhibited an antipathy towards kids who scream at teachers and disrupt class. But the fact is, they’re not just disrupting the learning of their fellow students. Their behavior is disrupting their own learning. This child preparing to throw the desk didn’t create the system that allows him to avoid schoolwork by engaging in disruptive behavior. That system was created by experts with doctorates in Education, Sociology and Law, experts rewarded with both generous paychecks and the power to impose their philosophical whims on children who can’t possibly know better. This disrupting, that the student above is enjoying in the moment, isn’t just cheating his schoolmates out of an education. It’s cheating him as well.The fact that he’s about to throw a desk at a fellow student doesn’t mean he’s dumb. He likely did the 6th grade version of a Cost–benefit analysis of throwing a desk and realized that it’s not going to cost him anything and it will enhance his social standing among peers. Maybe he has the cognitive ability to go to college. Maybe if he were in a calm, structured classroom, where he had no choice but to be civil and productive, he could grow up to be a Materials Science Engineer or an Oncologist. But the time he’s losing to his own classroom disruption is time that isn’t improving his academic skills or knowledge base.Someday in the not-too-distant future, that boy is going to be a man. The opportunities he has as an adult will result from how productively his educational time is used during the about 2,200 days he spends in his 1st -12th grade education.If he is allowed to waste this time, he is going to be educationally disadvantaged for the rest of his life. If my own experience as a young man with a learning disability and my 22 year career have taught me one thing, educational progress cannot take place until the student has a calm orderly place to learn.How did we get here?When I started earning my first credential 23 years ago, the philosophical trend was the “progressive model” of education which dated back to the early days of the 20th Century. Intellectuals and educational theorists like John Dewey proposed that education should be about doing, not learning.The idea was that if a teacher or a book imparted something to a student, that bit of learning lacked meaning and authenticity. But if the student discovered or “constructed” his own knowledge that would be more meaningful. One can see the reasonableness in the argument. A scientist who makes a discovery during an experiment would likely communicate that discovery better than he could communicate something he learned doing background research before the experiment.The progressive model of education favored the idea of students constructing their own knowledge, rather than having knowledge dispensed to them by an expert or a “sage on the stage” as progressives like to say dismissing teachers who lecture. And as I said, to a certain extent this is true.Hélio Gracie was able to construct the some of the most profound knowledge on the subject of ground grappling of any martial artist in history, and did so through the intense experimentation of Jujitsu competition and life-or-death street challenge matches.Likewise Chinese grappling master Tung-Sheng Ch'ang became one of the world’s leading experts in throws by constructing his own knowledge over decades of competition during which he was never defeated by an opponent.But before either of those masters could construct their profound knowledge in their respected specialties, they first had to learn through direct instruction and repetition. And that is something that the progressive model I was originally trained in leaves out. The progressive model wasn’t particularly strong on discipline either.By the time I started earning my MA in Education, the progressive model was being bullied out to the way by the Critical pedagogy model of teacher training. Many ed-schools were claiming to teach the Progressive Model, but what they were teaching was actually Critical pedagogy. This was definitely the case for many of my graduate Education classes.So what is Critical pedagogy. Basically it comes from a political philosophy called Critical Theory, which is basically a version of Marxism where economics have been replaced with relationships of “power” and “oppression.”Douglas Kellner, a proponent of the neo-Marxist Critical Theory, describes the evolution of thought from Karl Marx to what I had to learn to get my credential in California 20 years ago in From Classical Marxism to Critical Pedagogy by Douglas Kellner.“Alongside of the proliferation of neo-Marxian theories of culture and society and globalization of cultural studies, forms of an oppositional critical pedagogy emerged that explicitly criticized schooling in capitalist societies while calling for more emancipatory modes of education. In his now classic The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972), Brazilian educator and activist Paulo Freire criticized the "banking concept of education" while calling for more interactive, dialogical, and participatory forms of pedagogy that are parallel in interesting ways to those of John Dewey. While Dewey wanted education to produce citizens for democracy, however, Freire sought, in the spirit of Marxist revolutionary praxis, to develop a pedagogy of the oppressed that would produce revolutionary subjects, empowered to overthrow oppression and to create a more democratic and just social order.”Within the framework of Critical pedagogy, the emphasis is on equity and redress of past injustices. If a student is acting up, it’s because our racist capitalist system has so victimized this student that he is merely reacting to his oppression. A system of discipline that would coerce this student into what the white, hetero-normative patriarchy considers “good behavior” is actually further oppression. It’s kind of the educational equivalent of the 1970s cliche where the criminal is the “victim of society.”Now don’t get me wrong. Most teachers are not coming out of Ed-school as raving Marxists. At this point many of the people teaching these courses don’t know about the origins of what their teaching. They actually think their teaching old fashioned 20th century Progressive Education, the Critical pedagogy is so intertwined with the teacher-training curriculum that it would be hard to separate it. What I’m saying is that when you go through such a program, teaching you to get “control” of an unruly student isn’t just a low priority, it might be seen as “further oppression.”ConclusionThe only feasible path towards reducing educational inequality is to transition our curricular model away from the constructivist model of theorists like John Dewey to a modernized version of the knowledge centered classroom as advocated by the Core Knowledge Foundation. We also need to guarantee a calm, structured and disruption free learning environment for all students. This is most important for the students prone to causing the disruption and they tend to become the adults with the most profound educational deficiencies.This won’t be an easy transition. Advocated of the Progressive and Critical pedagogy approaches to education are firmly in charge of teacher training programs at the university level, as well as the federal Department of Education. Many of these are as attached to their respective educational philosophies as a members of the Westboro Baptist Church or the Black Hebrew Israelites are to their religious philosophies. For these professors and bureaucrats, turning to an educational model that contradicts their philosophy is Heresy. Better educational outcomes for all students will only happen when parents override their commitment to a philosophy.