All posts by ckosnik

Teacher Education for High Poverty Schools

critical literacy, culturally responsive teaching, education, educational reform, higher education, Social Justice, Teacher education, teacher educators, , ,

Jo Lampert and Bruce  Burnett have recently edited an amazing text,Teacher Education for High Poverty Schools. The text is available from Springer.

http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319220581Image_LampertBookcover

This volume captures the innovative, theory-based, and grounded work being done by established scholars who are interrogating how teacher education can prepare teachers to work in challenging and diverse high-poverty settings. It offers articles from the US, Australia, Canada, the UK and Chile by some of the most significant scholars in the field. Internationally, research suggests that effective teachers for high poverty schools require deep theoretical understanding as well as the capacity to function across three well-substantiated areas: deep content knowledge, well-tuned pedagogical skills, and demonstrated attributes that prove their understanding and commitment to social justice. Schools in low socioeconomic communities need quality teachers most, however, they are often staffed by the least experienced and least prepared teachers. The chapters in this volume examine how pre-service teachers are taught to understand the social contexts of education. Drawing on the individual expertise of the authors, the topics covered include unpacking poverty for pre-service teachers, issues related to urban schooling as well as remote and regional area schooling.

Our (Clare) research team contributed a chapter to the text which focused on six literacy teacher educators who purposefully prepare student teachers to work in high poverty schools. Here is the chapter: TchingforHighPovertySchools

Mary Kennedy on Engaging Student Teachers More Deeply

academics, curriculum; teachers, educational reform, teaching for understanding, , , , , ,

As I (Clive) have said before, I’m a great fan of Mary Kennedy of Michigan State University. In earlier postings I commented on her complex vision of teaching and her incremental yet radical approach to school reform. Having read a new article of hers in the latest issue of the Journal of Teacher Education (Jan/Feb 2016), I wish to recommend it.

Ever courageous, Kennedy in this piece takes on the currently popular movement for the teaching of “core practices” in teacher education. While an improvement on earlier practice-focused teacher education approaches – in that the practices in question are medium-grained rather than too specific or too general – she believes this approach is (a) too didactic and (b) neglects the purposes of teaching. She proposes instead helping student teachers see that a variety of complex strategies are needed to achieve the purposes of schooling, and constant adjustments on their part are required along the way.

Kennedy is careful to note this is “not an either/or decision. I am not proposing that we abandon specific practices in favor of problem solving strategies. Instead I argue here for (a) less attention to bodies of knowledge, (b) less attention to specific teaching behaviors, and (c) far more attention to the persistent challenges” of achieving the purposes teaching. Her position is that in pre-service (and in-service) education we should “not recite knowledge or dictate practices to teachers, but instead engage teachers in more analysis and exploration of alternatives.” This seems to me to embody the constructivist approach to teaching that – as Kennedy has said elsewhere – most teacher educators advocate.

For those who may see this as an overly idealistic approach that will undermine pupil performance on standardized tests, Kennedy cites the findings of a review that “programs using these alternative pedagogies were generally more effective at raising student achievement than were the didactic programs that focused on either bodies of knowledge or specific teaching practices.”

 

 

Teachers Spend Own Money for Supplies

a teacher's journey, education, Reflections, schooling, , , , ,

As a teacher I (Clare) was always on the look out for resources for my classroom and like many other teachers spent my own money to supplement when necessary. With education budgets getting even tighter I think that more and more teachers are dipping into their wallets to simply run their classrooms. Below is a graphic and an article that I thought you might find interesting (but discouraging). And since when did being a fund-raiser become part of a teacher’s job.

TeachersPayforSupplies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bruce Hogue is always looking for ways to make teaching science more interesting.

But the money he uses for the boxes of Cheerios, Bran Flakes and Total needed for one his experiments usually comes out of his pocket.

“As a science teacher, I have an official budget, but that is usually gone by the beginning of the year,” says Hogue, who works in suburban Denver. “When I want to do a science lab, I usually pay for it all on my own.”

Hogue is one of the millions of teachers across the country who are shelling out their own hard-earned cash to pay for books, pens, pencils and other basic supplies that schools have provided in the past.

According to a new survey, teachers spent an average of $448 of their own money on instructional materials and school supplies for the 1998-99 school year.

The survey conducted last summer by the National School Supply and Equipment Association — a trade group representing the school supply industry — found that teachers pay for 77 percent of the school supplies needed in their classrooms. The rest comes from the school, parent-teacher groups and other school funds.

Spending to Learn

This doesn’t surprise teachers and their advocates.

“What other profession do you know where professionals have to use their own money to do their job properly?” says Janet Fass, spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers. “Do engineers, do accountants spend their own money? Why should teachers when they are far lower paid than other professionals?”

Teachers say they not only buy school supplies with their money, but many times they help out students who may not have cash for lunch or to get home.

In Philadelphia, where teachers are in intense contract negotiations with school administrators this week, one-fourth of teachers said they gave their own money to students for transportation, books and lunches, according to a survey conducted by the city’s teachers union. Furthermore, 47 percent said they lacked basic supplies such as paper, pens and pencils for their classrooms.

The contract proposal under consideration now would take away a $50 stipend that teachers get for school supplies, says Barbara Goodman, communications director for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.

“We are talking about a school system that is not able to supply funding for what should be priorities — books, pens, paper,” says Goodman.

Suburbia Also Affected

And it is not just in urban neighborhoods that teachers often become charity workers.

Hogan, the suburban Denver science teacher, says he recently gave lunch money to one of his students whose disabled mother is in the process of applying to get her son in the school’s free lunch program.

“It’s the little stuff that falls through the cracks that we usually have to pick up,” said Hogue, who has been teaching science for 30 years.

But Hogue has found a creative way to solve his money problems.

He has turned to private funding for help. Groups like NASA, the U.S. Geological Society and private corporations like Lockheed-Martin have donated thousands for his classroom experiments.

Now, when other teachers panic, Hogue has good advice.

He takes out his list of where he gets his grant material and reminds them there are people willing to help out.

 

Testing and Assessment in Norway

assessment, government reforms, schooling, , , , , , ,

I (Clare) read this article on testing. We have had many posts about assessment on this blog and thought this one might be more “food for thought.”

internationalednews's avatarInternational Education News

In order to learn about what’s happened with testing and assessment in Norway in recent years, we had a conversation with Sverre Tveit. Tveit is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Education at the University of Oslo. He will join the University of Agder in southern Norway as University Lecturer in August. In addition to his comparative research related to assessment policy, Tveit has also worked on education and assessment issues at the municipal level (the equivalent of the district level in the US) and was a board member of the Norwegian School Student Union (which organized protests against the initial implementation of the national tests in 2005). He talked with us about how the national tests seem to have been integrated into the Norwegian education system but also pointed to the ways in which local and national politics reflect continuing debates over issues and tensions of testing, assessment…

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AERA Elections

AERA,

Hi Folks,
If you are a member of AERA you will have received an email asking you to vote for the new slate of officersLin Goodwin. Often I am not interested in these because I never know anyone who is running. And think that my vote will not make a difference. But this time is different. In many of our blogs we have talked about the work of Lin Goodwin who is amazing researcher. She has been nominated for President of AERA. What an honour. So be sure to vote!!!!!!!!
Clare

Support for Teachers from the Field of Medicine

assessment, communicating ideas and research, education, Reflections, schooling, teaching feedback, , , , , , , ,

At last someone has linked the problems of inappropriate use of testing in education with Doctorthose of the prestigious profession of medicine. Robert Wachter, Professor of Medicine at UCSF, has written a book titled The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age in which he argues that measurement has gotten out of hand. In a New York Times article “How Measurement Fails Us” (Sunday Review, Jan 17, 2016, p. 5) he states:

“Two of the most vital industries, health care and education, have become increasingly subjected to metrics and measurements. Of course, we need to hold professionals accountable. But the focus on numbers has gone too far.”

In the article Wachter notes that “burnout rates for doctors top 50 percent” and he says recent research has shown that “the electronic health record was a dominant culprit.” He then draws a parallel with teaching.

“Education is experiencing its own version of measurement fatigue. Educators complain that the focus on student test performance comes at the expense of learning.”

Wachter maintains that what is needed is “thoughtful and limited assessment.” “Measurement cannot go away, but it needs to be scaled back and allowed to mature. We need more targeted measures, ones that have been vetted to ensure that they really matter.” We also need to take account of the harm excessive measurement does. Again he compares the two professions: research has shown that

“In medicine, doctors no longer made eye contact with patients as they clicked away. In education, even parents who favored more testing around Common Core standards worried about the damaging influence of all the exams.”

With this welcome support, we in education need to consider how we can keep measurement within limits and focused on key matters, so it does not undermine our profession. When is measurement useful, and when does it do more harm than good?

Well-Being – How are we doing?

meaning of life, study of happiness, , , , , ,

I (Clare) recently discovered an extremely interesting research study. How are Ontarians Really Doing? by the Canadian Index of Wellbeing

The concept of well-being is near and dear to my heart. In my doctoral thesis I wrote that well-being should be the ultimate goal of schooling. Even if you are not from Ontario I think you will find this study interesting because it goes beyond traditional and typical ways of measuring how well a country is doing. Below are some excerpts from the document and here is the link to the entire document.https://uwaterloo.ca/canadian-index-wellbeing/

What is wellbeing? Image_InfographiconWellbeing

There are many definitions of wellbeing. The Canadian Index of Wellbeing has adopted the following as its working definition:

 The presence of the highest possible quality of life in its full breadth of expression focused on but not necessarily exclusive to: good living standards, robust health, a sustainable environment, vital communities, an educated populace, balanced time use, high levels of democratic participation, and access to and participation in leisure and culture.

The United Nations and the OECD agree – the true measure of a country’s progress must include the well being of its citizens.

While the most traditional metric, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), measures all goods and services produced by a country, it has two critical shortcomings. First, by focusing exclusively on the economy, GDP fails to capture areas of our lives that we care about most like education, health, environmental quality, and the relationships we have with others. Second, it does not identify the costs of economic growth — like pollution.

To create a robust and more revealing measure of our social progress, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW) has been working with experts and everyday Canadians since 1999 to determine how we are really doing in the areas of our lives that matter most. The CIW measures overall wellbeing based on 64 indicators covering eight domains of vital importance to Canadians: Education, Community Vitality, Healthy Populations, Democratic Engagement, Environment, Leisure and Culture, Time Use, and Living Standards. The CIW’s comprehensive index of overall wellbeing tracks progress provincially and nationally and allows comparisons to GDP.

Comparing the CIW and GDP between 1994 and 2010 reveals a chasm between our wellbeing and economic growth both nationally and provincially. Over the 17-year period, GDP has grown almost four times more than our overall wellbeing. The trends clearly show that even when times are good, overall wellbeing does not keep up with economic growth and when times are bad, the impact on our wellbeing is even harsher. We have to ask ourselves, is this good enough?

Some of the topics addressed are:

  • Progress in education, community vitality and healthy populations
  • Decline in leisure and culture
  • Decline in the environment
  • Lagging far behind in living standards

Is Texting Killing Language?

art as a form of communication, communication, literacy, teachers, teaching, , , ,

Image_JohnMcWhorterOn Sunday Clive posted a blog Short or Long Form Writing? I (Clare) also wonder/worry about our new forms of communication and what is happening to “English.” John McWhorter did a fabulous Ted Talk  asking is Texting Killing Language. http://www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk

It is truly worth listening to because he gives us a different perspective. He notes:

We always hear that texting is a scourge. The idea is that texting spells the decline and fall of any kind of serious literacy, or at least writing ability, among young people in the United States and now the whole world today. The fact of the matter is that it just isn’t true, and it’s easy to think that it is true, but in order to see it in another way, in order to see that actually texting is a miraculous thing, not just energetic, but a miraculous thing, a kind of emergent complexity that we’re seeing happening right now, we have to pull the camera back for a bit and look at what language really is, in which case, one thing that we see is that texting is not writing at all. What do I mean by that?

Casual speech is something quite different. Linguists have actually shown that when we’re speaking casually in an unmonitored way, we tend to speak in word packets of maybe seven to 10 words. You’ll notice this if you ever have occasion to record yourself or a group of people talking. That’s what speech is like. Speech is much looser. It’s much more telegraphic. It’s much less reflective — very different from writing. So we naturally tend to think, because we see language written so often, that that’s what language is, but actually what language is, is speech. They are two things.

What texting is, despite the fact that it involves the brute mechanics of something that we call writing, is fingered speech. That’s what texting is. Now we can write the way we talk. And it’s a very interesting thing, but nevertheless easy to think that still it represents some sort of decline. We see this general bagginess of the structure, the lack of concern with rules and the way that we’re used to learning on the blackboard, and so we think that something has gone wrong. It’s a very natural sense.

Short or Long Form Writing?

communicating ideas and research, communication, literacy, , , , ,

There is a lot of enthusiasm today about the potential of short form communication – SocialMediatweets, blogs, etc. – to facilitate inquiry and professional development. At the same time, books and long articles continue to be published in huge numbers. Which medium is likely to have greater impact? An obvious response is that we should use both; but when forced to choose (either as reader or writer), which should we opt for? In my (Clive’s) view it depends on the context and how we go about it.

Teaching is such a complex process that individual tweets or blogs about it may be of little use. However, if they are part of an ongoing conversation (literal or metaphoric) they can be very valuable. It is the same with articles and books: they must respond to the concerns and thinking in the field if they are to be helpful.

Wittgenstein once said (according to Iris Murdoch – NYT, January 24, 2016): “One conversation with a philosopher is as pointless as one piano lesson.” So much for short form communication! But it depends on the context. For a serious pianist, a single interaction with another pianist can have a big impact. And equally, if an academic is willing to dialogue rather than just lecture endlessly about their theory, one conversation can be very helpful.

Whether short or long, communication should as far as possible “keep the conversation going” (to use Rorty’s phrase) so people learn from each other and there is a cumulative effect. We cannot always have an actual conversation, but if we listen to what others are asking and thinking we can make a contribution.