SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Math-u-babble

Thanks to Paul Bennett at Educhatter for this link to a witty video on edubabble in math class.  It’s from the newest addition to our education blog roll.  Do The Math is hosted by a university math professor nicknamed “Hypatia”. 

To help you cut through the edubabble, be it in math, reading or report cards, don’t miss your opportunity to hear Michael Zwaagstra, lead author of the bestselling What’s Wrong With Our Schools and How We Can Fix Them, who will be speaking in Toronto at our annual meeting on December 4th at 12:30 pm.

Click here to register for this free event.

The Micawber Principle

The Ontario Government has just announced that, starting in September, students in grades 4-12 will learn about saving, spending, investing, and managing money. In light of this year’s projected $25 billion deficit, perhaps the province’s Cabinet members should be required to take the course as well.

However, such a course is probably unnecessary so long as people keep in mind the famous advice of Charles Dickens’ William Micawber: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

Danger - Or Opportunity?

The Globe and Mail is predicting tumultuous times at the Toronto District School Board as trustees struggle to come to grips with their declining enrollment (at least 4,000 students every year). So far, not many schools have been closed, but this is obviously a state of affairs that cannot continue. And Toronto is not alone in its dilemma. All around the province, school enrollments are declining and school boards are trying to come to grips with the need to close schools. 

It's probably not an overstatement to describe the pending closure of dozens of Ontario schools as a crisis for many communities. But the written word for crisis in Chinese consists of two characters - one representing danger and the other representing opportunity. The school closure crisis is in fact offering school boards an opportunity - if they can only see it.

School boards need to abandon their current view of schools as big boxes dedicated solely to the education of children. If they cling to this view, then they have no possible path other than closing schools. But if they think flexibly about schools, school boards can solve their excess capacity problems and in the process achieve better schools. There are two possible ways to deal with the unused space: use it to generate extra income or sell of some of their white-elephant big boxes and move the remaining students to a non-traditional space in the same neighbourhood.

The first option, that of making money by renting or selling the unused space to some other agency or agencies, offers certain advantages in terms of complementary services. For example, if a dentist were to rent out space in a school, he or she could give dental hygiene lessons to the students and look after their teeth. 

The second option is to sell off the big-box schools and re-establish the students in smaller, less expensive venues like church basements or community centres or unused commercial space. Once again, it would be great if complementary arrangements could be made. For example, if a school relocated in a YMCA, the children could benefit from the many excellent athletic and recreational facilities there.

Opportunities don't always announce themselves with trumpets and gongs. Hidden deep inside the school closure crisis is the opportunity to create new and better schools. However, the pain involved in reinventing schools makes it more likely that the school boards will just keep on doing what they've always done in the past - simply closing community schools when enrolment shrinks.

However, it is possible that school boards might be persuaded to consider reinvented schools if they perceived that the process would be less painful than closing schools. Perhaps the parents at affected schools might like to keep this in mind....

The Problem With Teaching Problem-Solving

Many educators assume that "higher-order skills", like problem solving, are more important than a knowledge of and fluency with mathematics. However, this article in the latest journal of the American Mathematics Society argues otherwise. I will summarize the article for those who don't have time to read the whole thing (it's only two pages though.) 

There is no systematic body of evidence supporting the notion that teaching problem solving leads to better problem solving. Modern pedagogical theory fundamentally misunderstands the role of problem solving in cognition. The route to problem solving ability is best illustrated by a series of experiments by a Dutch pscyhologist, De Groot (1946-1965). 

"Researching why chess masters always defeated weekend players, De Groot managed to find only one difference. He showed masters and weekend players a board configuration from a real game, removed it after five seconds, and asked them to reproduce the board. Masters could do so with an accuracy rate of about 70% compared with 30% for weekend players. Chase and Simon (1973) replicated these results and additionally demonstrated that when the experiment was repeated with random configurations rather than real-game configurations, masters and weekend players had equal accuracy (plus or minus 30%). Masters were superior only for configurations taken from real games."

The superiority of the master chess players was derived not from supeior problem solving abilities but rather from having stored thousands of configurations in their long-term memory. Superior problem solving abilities are the result of massive complexes of closely-integrated information stored in long-term memory. The way to develop students' problem-solving abilities is to provide them with enough practice and experience in the relevant mathematics to allow them to solve new problems in in the context of other similar problems. A good way to do this is to provide them with practice in studying worked examples and then working many similar problems independently. 

In contrast to the lack of evidence supporting the direct teaching of generalized problem solving, there is overwhelming research evidence supporting the worked-example approach - and not just in mathematics. This finding applies to "all curriculum areas, especially areas that many students find difficult and that are critical to modern societies".

Sunday at the Movies (The Power of YouTube)

Many teachers have discovered that Youtube is a terrific teaching resource. For example, history teachers can show a video that explains, say, the Battle of the Plains of Abraham or the signing of the Magna Carta in a pithy fashion that students are likely to retain. Likewise, geography teachers can illustrate tectonic plate movement or teach important facts about the Hanseatic League, music teachers can show clips about composers and their music, and so forth. So today at the School for Thought movies, you can watch this video that will probably teach you something new about hydrogen in a completely painless way. Don't forget the popcorn!

School Choice is a Winning Political Strategy

Canadian education reformers who take the long view should be pleased with the results of the recent American elections where Republicans gained control of an additional 19 state legislatures and several school choice champions were elected governor. The voters have spoken, and what they are saying is that they want school choice. It begins to look as if the school choice bandwagon is unstoppable. 

Canadian politicians would do well to take notice.

Unmerited Pay

Although yesterday’s post was intended to highlight the potential of using test scores to evaluate faculties of education, the point got lost in the stampede to discuss merit pay. Since interest in this topic appears to be high, today’s post continues the thread of merit pay.

Dean Doug referred to Daniel Willingham’s opposition to merit pay based on test scores, and so here is a video of Dr. Willingham outlining the problems with this approach. And of course Dean Doug obligingly pointed out another problem - namely the probability that the teachers’ unions will soon ensure that the vast majority of teachers qualify for the merit bonus, thereby raising salaries and accomplishing nothing.

And yet, and yet…. Other professions pay their top performers more, and even many private schools. This is not rocket science. Perhaps the notion of merit pay should be shelved until some layers have been stripped away from overly-regulated public education nightmares that block virtually every improvement measure.

One Small Step for Man, One Giant Step for Mankind

In Baltimore, teachers will soon be voting on a new contract which would see teachers evaluated and paid - in part - on the basis of their students’ test scores (for example, no more automatic pay bumps for teachers who pursue advanced degrees). If this happens, it will mean that it will also be possible to evaluate faculties of education on the basis of how well their graduates perform.

Of course, in most professions this would hardly be earth-shattering. Engineers, lawyers, accountants, dentists - their advancement depends on how well they do on the job. We’ll let you know if the Baltimore teachers opt to join the real world. To be continued….

Spelling Matters

Apparently a new education trend is on the way - namely the elimination of weekly spelling tests - as reported here. It may seem too obvious to put into words, but I'm going to say it anyway. It is a good idea for kids to learn to spell and tests are a useful tool for making it happen. 

If you have a school-age child whose school is not teaching him or her to be a good speller, you need to take matters into your own hands. Here's an article from our archives that lets you test how well your child can spell at present, and then explains how you can go about improving his or her spelling. 

Beware Paradigm Shifts

Dan Willingham is a cognitive scientist who writes a weekly column called "The Answer Sheet: A School Survival Guide for Parents (And Everyone Else) " for the Washington Post. It's always excellent value, and I particularly like this one on the need for a "paradigm shift" in education. 

At the outset, let me make myself clear. Like those who call for paradigm shifts, I too believe that public education in Canada and the US is in need of radical change. However, whenever someone starts talking about paradigm shifts, a little bell starts ringing in my head - because it generally signals a desire to become even more child-centred and less intellectual. Don't buy it.

Dr. Willingham does a nice job of pointing out that the romantic view of education has been around for a long time and that "many people have tried to create schools inspired by these ideals before. A few were spectacular, inspiring successes. Most crashed and burned." Dr. Willingham reasonably asks why anyone would think it would be different this time around.