(Free online collection of essays on effective math instruction.) Literacy Strategies for Improving Mathematics Instruction Preface
memory matters, even for those of us teaching the most complex cognitive skills we can imagine. Given its importance to our work in higher education, I sought help from Miller, first of all, in thinking about how her research might apply to the design and presentation of college courses. "The mind isn't a sponge that absorbs whatever disjointed information we happen to pick up through our senses," she said. "Rather, we acquire information from the environment that we (a) understand, and (b) care about. It follows that when we design our courses, we should start by asking ourselves how we will capture and direct students' attention, and then plan how we will frame the information in a meaningful, interpretable way. This is different from the traditional approach of starting with the material to be covered and how we plan to spread it out over the course of the semester."
The Socratic questioning methodology identifies six types of questions: clarification, assumptions, evidence, viewpoints, consequences and of course- questions about the question.
Learning lurches between extremes: the formal v informal, didactic v discover , self-paced v social, teaching v learning. But is there a bridge between these extremes, something that cleverly combines teaching and learning? Over the years, starting with Judith Harris’s brilliant (and shocking) work on peer pressure, then Eric Mazur’s work at Harvard but also through several presentations at a recent JISC E-assessment conference, I’ve been smitten by peer learning. The idea is to encourage learners to learn from each other. Compelling arguments?
(Ed. Note: This might be how to make the assignment talk back.)
We learned several things about Bermuda that Abby hadn't found in her initial search for "10 facts", including that they catch rainwater from their roofs for all of their fresh water, that girls like playing "netball," and that each house is only allowed to own one car. She also got to see what the roofs and houses looked like, and what Shannon and his wife (and their house) looked and sounded like. Ultimately Abby combined this new information with what she already had, came up with her 10 facts, and we printed out the Google Doc to staple to the homework worksheet. (Yes, I know, but sometimes it's just easier to print and staple than perhaps cause problems by asking to turn it in electronically. She also made a blog post.) So, which is Abby more likely to remember, the facts she found from a couple of websites, or the 15 minute conversation with Shannon and his wife? (After we hung up we were talking about collecting the rainwater for all their water needs and Abby said, "Wow, they must get a lot of rain." I'm thinking that has more of an impact than reading their annual rainfall in inches.) Which one gave her a better feel for what it was like to live in Bermuda? Which is more likely to encourage her to be curious about the world around her? What assignments of your own could perhaps be revisited? How can you help connect your students to the wider world around them?
A statement of a learning objective contains a verb (an action) and an object (usually a noun).
seven assessment and grading practices to enhance learning and teaching.
Adding it Up explores how students in pre-K through 8th grade learn mathematics and recommends how teaching, curricula, and teacher education should change to improve mathematics learning during these critical years.
(The ideas here have wide general application. A quick easy read.)
Some suggestions are presented for teaching statistics. It is helpful to use a framework called backward instructional design, which consists of a series of steps that guide a teacher in constructing effective instruction. The first step in selecting the right pedagogy is to identify essential understandings and skills. Then, assessments that are the best measure of these understandings and skills need to be designed. Once these steps are completed, appropriate pedagogy to help students acquire and demonstrate their understanding and skills can be specified. A review of the literature yields some suggestions for college teaching that can be grouped in to categories of: (1) overcoming fear and anxiety; (2) lecturing creatively; (3) motivating students; and (4) using engaging discussions.
EDUCAUSE Review is the association's award-winning magazine for the higher education IT community. Published bimonthly in print (22,000 distributed copies) and online (over 50,000 visits per month), the magazine takes a broad look at current developments and trends in information technology, how they may affect the college/university as an institution, and what these mean for higher education and society. In addition to EDUCAUSE members, the magazine's audience consists of presidents/chancellors, senior academic and administrative leaders, non-IT staff, faculty in all disciplines, librarians, and corporate staff/leaders.
Handheld computers or personal digital assistants (PDAs) were launched in the marketplace in 1996. Within 18 months, these handheld devices had swept through the business community and virtually transformed the way people took notes and kept professional and personal calendars.
... Why hasn't technology, be it hardware or software, had the same transformative effect on K-12 education? The National Research Council's (NRC) project on Improving Learning with Information Technology (ILIT) was created to confront this question and ultimately to enable the transformation of K-12 education through information technology.
Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored.
if you are not teaching these things in your classes, why are you not?
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Pédagogie constructiviste de Caleb Gattegno... exploring and putting into practice Caleb Gattegno's theories of subordinating teaching to learning.
Cognitive psychology has much to contribute to our understanding of the best ways to pro- mote learning and memory in the college classroom. However, cognitive theory has evolved considerably in recent decades, and it is important for instructors to have an up-to-date under- standing of these theories, particularly those—such as memory theories—that bear directly on how students absorb new information. This article offers a non-technical overview of major theoretical ideas on memory, geared to instructors who want to optimize their teaching to take advantage of the way human memory works. Relevant theories of short-term and working memory are reviewed, with particular attention to how these have been refined and changed in recent years. Long-term memory is also discussed, with emphasis on the concept that human memory is an adaptation shaped by natural selection, an idea that instructors can use to create more memorable learning experiences. Lastly, the article presents a set of predictions regard- ing future trends in teaching-related cognitive theory; these include an increasing emphasis on the role of attention in memory, new understanding of the limitations of working memory, de-emphasis on perceptual learning styles and increased emphasis on frequent testing.
Each two-page How To sheet includes an introduction to a teaching and learning topic, best practices and ideas, supporting research, and references. Included below are also one page guides to a variety of teaching topics.
The ideas in this 100 year old book by John Dewey, now available for free online, are still fresh today. There's something disturbing about that.
"The following pages embody an endeavor to detect and state the ideas implied in a democratic society and to apply these ideas to the problems of the enterprise of education. The discussion includes an indication of the constructive aims and methods of public education as seen from this point of view, and a critical estimate of the theories of knowing and moral development which were formulated in earlier social conditions, but which still operate, in societies nominally democratic, to hamper the adequate realization of the democratic ideal. As will appear from the book itself, the philosophy stated in this book connects the growth of democracy with the development of the experimental method in the sciences, evolutionary ideas in the biological sciences, and the industrial reorganization, and is concerned to point out the changes in subject matter and method of education indicated by these developments."
Why don't even the brightest students truly grasp simple science concepts? These video programs pick up on the questions asked in the Private Universe documentary and further explore how children learn. Based on recent research, as well as the pioneering work of Piaget and others, Minds of Our Own shows that many of the things we assume about how children learn are simply not true. For educators and parents, these programs bring new insight to debates about education reform.
Duke is captivating, and he makes a clear argument that students don't learn what we think we teach because they're too busy learning what we're actually teaching, which is, often, that precision is more important than understanding and that grades matter. The solution, he argues, is to teach, over and over, the things that we actually want our students to remember after the semester is over. And, that we should not defer learning about "The Good Stuff" until after they've suffered through boring prerequisites. Instead, we should teach the good stuff first and teach what we really enjoy.
one of the things that has been of interest to me is looking differently at pedagogies.
Watch Dylan Wiliam talk about the importance of young people being able to reflect on their learning and how teachers can utilise these insights.
Teachers of all kinds can find fresh resources -- and inspiration -- in this batch of TEDTalks. Some talks may shake your worldview: Sir Ken Robinson questions the very basis of our education system, while Erin McKean does the same for our most sacred of reference books, the dictionary. Others (like Dave Eggers) celebrate the extraordinary power of teachers and schools -- and share ways you can help them.
Look here for pointers to amazing classroom tools and techniques.
There are many questions about the mathematical preparation teachers need. Recent recommendations from a variety of sources state that reforming teacher preparation in postsecondary institutions is central in providing quality mathematics education to all students. The Mathematics Teacher Preparation Content Workshop examined this problem by considering two central questions:
* What is the mathematical knowledge teachers need to know in order to teach well? * How can teachers develop the mathematical knowledge they need to teach well? The Workshop activities focused on using actual acts of teaching such as examining student work, designing tasks, or posing questions, as a medium for teacher learning. The Workshop proceedings, Knowing and Learning Mathematics for Teaching, is a collection of the papers presented, the activities, and plenary sessions that took place.
(Actually, it turned out to be 11 min. 45 sec.) Slides from a presentation at the NIBBLE conference in Virden Manitoba,
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