Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible 1. Domain knowledge includes the concepts, facts, and procedures explicitly identified with a particular subject matter; these are generally explicated in school textbooks, class lectures, and demonstrations. This kind of knowledge, although certainly important, provides insufficient clues for many students about how to solve problems and accomplish tasks in a domain. Moreover, when it is learned in isolation from realistic problems contexts and expert problem-solving practices, domain knowledge tends to remain inert in situations for which it is appropriate, even for successful students. And finally, although at least some concepts can be formally described, many of the crucial subtleties of their meaning are best acquired through applying them in a variety of problem situations.
How Can You Close the School Year? Six Ideas That Work for In-Person, Hybrid, and Remote Students Schools across the northern hemisphere are approaching summer break, after almost a year and a half of disrupted learning. Because of physical distancing measures, some students may be missing many of the rituals that usually mark the end of the school year, such as class field trips, graduation ceremonies, or simply the opportunity to say goodbye to friends and teachers in person. End of year rituals are not only rites of passage, but manifestations of community. During this time of upheaval caused by the coronavirus pandemic, it is especially important for students to have opportunities to experience community, connect, and feel a sense of closure before heading off for the summer. This Teaching Idea contains six activities that can help students reflect on the past school year, celebrate their school community, and look ahead to what comes next. Each activity can be used on its own, so choose any combination that will work well for your class.
Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible This article has exercised a great influence on the 21st Century Learning Initiative’s thinking. It originally appeared in the Winter, 1991 issue of American Educator, the journal of The American Federation of Teachers, and is reprinted here with permission. In ancient times, teaching and learning were accomplished through apprenticeship: We taught our children how to speak, grow crops, craft cabinets, or tailor clothes by showing them how and by helping them do it. Apprenticeship was the vehicle for transmitting the knowledge required for expert practice in fields from painting and sculpting to medicine and law. It was the natural way to learn.
Teachers must ditch 'neuromyth' of learning styles, say scientists Teaching children according to their individual “learning style” does not achieve better results and should be ditched by schools in favour of evidence-based practice, according to leading scientists. Thirty eminent academics from the worlds of neuroscience, education and psychology have signed a letter to the Guardian voicing their concern about the popularity of the learning style approach among some teachers. They say it is ineffective, a waste of resources and potentially even damaging as it can lead to a fixed approach that could impair pupils’ potential to apply or adapt themselves to different ways of learning. The group opposes the theory that learning is more effective if pupils are taught using an individual approach identified as their personal “learning style”. Some pupils, for example, are identified as having a “listening” style and could therefore be taught with storytelling and discussion rather than written exercises.
Anne Murphy Paul: Why Floundering Makes Learning Better Call it the “learning paradox”: the more you struggle and even fail while you’re trying to master new information, the better you’re likely to recall and apply that information later. The learning paradox is at the heart of “productive failure,” a phenomenon identified by Manu Kapur, a researcher at the Learning Sciences Lab at the National Institute of Education of Singapore. Kapur points out that while the model adopted by many teachers and employers when introducing others to new knowledge — providing lots of structure and guidance early on, until the students or workers show that they can do it on their own — makes intuitive sense, it may not be the best way to promote learning. Rather, it’s better to let the neophytes wrestle with the material on their own for a while, refraining from giving them any assistance at the start. (MORE: Paul: The Secret to Grace Under Pressure) With one group of students, the teacher provided strong “scaffolding” — instructional support — and feedback.
What Is Educational Psychology? Educational psychology involves the study of how people learn, including topics such as student outcomes, the instructional process, individual differences in learning, gifted learners, and learning disabilities. This branch of psychology involves not just the learning process of early childhood and adolescence but includes the social, emotional, and cognitive processes that are involved in learning throughout the entire lifespan. The field of educational psychology incorporates a number of other disciplines, including developmental psychology, behavioral psychology, and cognitive psychology.
Six Quick Tips If You're Suddenly Teaching STEM Fall has arrived, school doors have reopened for many students across the USA, and quite a few educators face a fresh and potentially daunting assignment: Teach STEM. STEM, it seems, has finally reached Education Buzzword of the Year status. Novice teachers, experienced teachers, and even administrators are being asked to create STEM classes, often with inadequate know-how or support. Study finds no impact on student success from having adjunct instructors Most of the existing research on the employment of adjunct faculty and student success shows a negative relationship, not because adjuncts are bad teachers but because their working conditions prevent them from being as effective as they could be. But earlier this fall, a much-cited study disputed by some, showed the opposite: that students actually may learn more from adjunct faculty members -- at least at research universities that can afford to pay part-timers well and that may discourage tenure-track faculty members from focusing on teaching. Now, a preliminary study is mixing up the literature once again, concluding that employment of adjunct faculty has no impact on student success in community colleges. “Part-time faculty have no negative impact on student degree or certificate attainment,” reads the study, to be presented today at the Association for the Study of Higher Education annual conference, in St. Louis. Via email, Ehrenberg called Yu’s methodology “interesting.”
Beyond teacher egocentrism: design thinking As teachers we understandably believe that it is the ‘teaching’ that causes learning. But this is too egocentric a formulation. As I said in my previous post, the learner’s attempts to learn causes all learning. How To Teach All Students To Think Critically All first year students at the University of Technology Sydney could soon be required to take a compulsory maths course in an attempt to give them some numerical thinking skills. The new course would be an elective next year and mandatory in 2016 with the university’s deputy vice-chancellor for education and students Shirley Alexander saying the aim is to give students some maths “critical thinking” skills. This is a worthwhile goal, but what about critical thinking in general? Most tertiary institutions have listed among their graduate attributes the ability to think critically. This seems a desirable outcome, but what exactly does it mean to think critically and how do you get students to do it?
Reading on Teenage Brains and Stress Reading on Teenage Brains and Stress Mark Moody Links for college admission and counseling offices to learn more about the impacts of stress on adolescent brains-- in hopes that we can all work together to minimize anxiety in the college application process! 80 colleges and universities announce plan for new application and new approach to preparing high school students Eighty leading colleges and universities on Monday announced a plan to reverse a decades-long process by which colleges have -- largely through the Common Application -- made their applications increasingly similar. Further, the colleges and universities are creating a platform for new online portfolios for high school students. The idea is to encourage ninth graders begin thinking more deeply about what they are learning or accomplishing in high school, to create new ways for college admissions officers, community organizations and others to coach them, and to help them emerge in their senior years with a body of work that can be used to help identify appropriate colleges and apply to them. Organizers of the new effort hope it will minimize some of the disadvantages faced by high school students without access to well-staffed guidance offices or private counselors. The new group is called the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success. A new application system.
What Is College Worth? If there is one thing most Americans have been able to agree on over the years, it is that getting an education, particularly a college education, is a key to human betterment and prosperity. The consensus dates back at least to 1636, when the legislature of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established Harvard College as America’s first institution of higher learning. It extended through the establishment of “land-grant colleges” during and after the Civil War, the passage of the G.I.
California Consequences: What If High Court Bans Race Preferences in College Admissions? Almost lost amid the recent flurry of marquee U.S. Supreme Court rulings—including one endorsing same-sex marriage and another upholding Obamacare—was a judicial move that could have a huge impact on who gets into top colleges. The justices, by opting to reconsider a case that challenges the University of Texas’s use of race and ethnicity to select students, signaled that they may be ready to effectively end affirmative action in college admissions nationwide. To do so would be to follow California’s example: Nearly two decades ago, voter-approved Prop. 209 made it the first of a handful of states to explicitly bar public universities from considering any applicant’s race or ethnicity in admissions. That clarifies how Texas wound up with a more “progressive” university admissions policy than California.