Larry Cuban - According to psychologists, reasoning is an untidy mental and emotional process that requires time for an active interplay between teachers and students to mull over inconsistencies, and time to work through problems without fear of teachers' or peers' cutting remarks. Reasoning also requires teachers creating a classroom climate that promotes students asking questions. In the classroom, then, the necessary conditions for thinking to occur are sufficient time and a classroom atmosphere where both teachers and students are free to display thinking without fear of reprimand or mockery.
Do high school structures promote enough time and classroom climates across academic subjects to support frequent and open use of reasoning skills? Hardly. Take for example, the 4 Ts: Time, Teacher Load, Textbooks, and Tests.
* Time. Teaching 30 students for 50 minutes leaves little time for considering ideas or problems when teachers are expected to cover many textbook chapters. Individual attention to students’ comments evaporates. Moreover, the bell schedule presses both teachers and students to rush through questions and answers. The average teacher waits less than a few seconds for a student to answer a question (see here and here).
* Teacher load. Most high school teachers face five classes daily totaling 125 to 150 students. Not all students in each class get called upon to answer questions.
* Textbooks. A required textbook is the primary source of classroom information. Texts get thicker, not thinner each year. Text-driven homework and quizzes determine what is to be remembered, not what ideas get analyzed.
* Tests. True-false items flourish in teacher-made tests; multiple-choice in standardized tests. Both require one correct answer. More
No comments:
Post a Comment