4 Ways to Improve Education Reform
- Respect inductive
principles for course design and delivery.
- Test ideas for reform in optimal and sub-optimal conditions first -
reform in haste, repent at leisure. Reforms like drugs should be tested
before widespread use.
- Provide materials and methods simple to understand and follow as a
lower bound or safety net for teachers parachuted into unfamiliar topics.
Do not assume that teachers are providing instruction within their area
of comfort - an ideal situation, but one is too often absent in
mathematics where two-thirds of instructors in North America, if not
elsewhere, do not regard themselves as skilled and confident in
mathematics.
- For instruction not streamed by ability, for instruction to be
inclusive and for instruction of students with poor attendance, develop
multi-term or multiyear, multilevel modules to favour self-paced
instruction skill and concept mastery. Include enrich material to
slow the more gifted students while everyone else catches.
For instruction, teachers and mathematics education committees need to
proactively collect and review ideas for not wait for
others. Course design and delivery, and approval of materials
or textbooks in secondary and even primary school mathematics
should include university professors of mathematics, so that content gaps,
inconsistencies and material that is not essential, your standard
curriculum pitfalls, are flagged. Good intentions should defer to or
combine with discipline knowledge.
The invention or collection of appetizers and lessons easily
understood and followed in class BY TEACHERS is one way to
make learning and teaching more effective. Some adjustment or
variation will be needed for different cultures, different learning
styles, in which students may be passive to active, cooperative to
resistance, to instruction, voluntary to compelled. Modular course design
may allow instruction to cope with multi-level classrooms and
intermittent attendance. And where instructors may be given teaching
assignments outside their zone of comfort or expertise, textbooks
and modules easily understood and followed by students and teachers could
provide a lower bound for education, and in place of complete confusion
may allow first-time instructors in a discipline to be two pages
ahead of students.
The question of how to develop skills and concepts, so the study of
mathematics and logic seems purposeful and not endless remains
open. Primary school and junior high school mathematics could
provide practical drill and practice on geometric and quantitative
figuring and measuring skills and concepts needed daily life at work, in
the home and in buying and selling, while offering or providing a
thought-based development. But skills and confidence may come from the
mastery through rote or comprehensions of methods which give repeatable,
reproducible and hence verifiable results. The direct and simple
use of formulas, given if not derived, could be part of this wide
ranging, preliminary and practical education. Saying and showing how to
use measurement and mathematical methods in a repeatable and
reproducible, and hence verifiable manner may be designed to help
students who end their studies early while providing an invitation and a
context for further studies. Ease of exposition and mastery would be the
guide. Details how need to be determined.
Hope for benefits, but look for the limitations first in any reform,
and then provide alternatives.
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