Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Response to “Using Research to Analyze, Inform, and Assess Changes in Instruction” by Heather J. Robinson

It seems clear that the image of the teacher standing at the chalkboard or overhead projector lecturing for an hour, or at least its effectiveness, is dead. However, in thinking back to some of my own teachers that I had in high school, this idea should have been dead a long time ago. I believe many teachers have known for a very long time that their teaching methods were largely ineffective; that they were only ever reaching a small percentage of the students. The others would have to pick it up on their own or through tutors. If these teachers had done some research into their own teaching methods as Robinson suggests, it would have been easy to see where they were failing.
I liken teaching without doing self research to a workout plan where nutrition is neglected and results are never studied. If a workout schedule of any kind were followed like this, success would surely be minimal. To not constantly be reviewing your methods and testing their effectiveness is to not complete the job of being a teacher. In order for learning to occur across the classroom, with strong students as well as weak, effective teaching methods must be adopted. It is the individual teacher that must figure out what these are.

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