Over the weekend, as Tom Watson made his historic run to win the British Open, I ventured an opinion long held but never uttered out loud that “any sport where a 59-year-old can beat guys in their 20s is not a sport, but a skill.” Winning a major golf tournament, it seems to me, might have more in common with winning a violin competition than, say, winning the 400-meter hurdles or the individual medley in swimming at the Olympics. If age does not preclude you from performing at an elite leve, what does that say about golfers as athletes?
Now I’m wondering about teaching: Can an alternatively certified 22-year-old really outperform a 59-year old veteran? And, if so, what does it say about teaching as a “profession.”
One of the reasons education gets led by the nose from one fad to the next may be that there is no organized effort to evaluate the claims made by groups and individuals offering professional development workshops for teachers. In his second post on how teachers can get more respect at Britannica Blog, Dan Willingham suggests that the American Association of School Administrators take on the role of evaluating claims made by those hawking PD.
Suppose that every professional development workshop came with a research disclosure statement that put it into one of three categories: (1) there is some research evidence backing the idea; (2) there is no evidence bearing on the idea, positive or negative; (3) the idea has been tested and data do not support it. It’s hard to believe that districts would be eager to sign on for workshops in the latter two categories.
“If school districts were more selective in the professional development activities that they pursued, some of the faddishness would be drained out of education,” Willingham believes. Doctors rely on a data-driven approach before adopting new treatments. “The public does not view the education establishment as similarly measured, and that is to the detriment of teachers and administrators,” he concludes.
“Although American teachers spend more working hours in classrooms than do instructors in some of the top-performing European and Asian countries,” says an Education Week story on a new professional development study, “U.S. students routinely post below-average scores on international exams.”
Why is this a “paradox” as EdWeek observes? If you spent more hours on the job than top-performing European and Asian workers, would you expect to be wealthier than they are? Time on task only makes a difference if you’re using it wisely. Doing more of what doesn’t work won’t change the outcome.
By Marlene Deschler
Recently a group of six teachers from Spring Grove Schools attended a Core Knowledge Conference in Washington, D.C.
The concept of Core Knowledge curriculum is building knowledge upon knowledge. The curriculum is for grades kindergarten through eighth grade and sequences topics so that the information builds on a topic from one year to the next.
“The Core Knowledge curriculum spells out all the things that we should address so there are no holes in our curriculum,” explained Principal Nancy Gulbranson.
Read the complete article
Recent Comments