Clay Burell's Library tagged pedagogy →  View Popular

   •   The question
of evidence, or “How do we know what we know?”

   •   The question
of viewpoint in all its multiplicity, or “Who’s speaking?”

   •   The search
for connection and patterns, or “What causes what?”

   •   Supposition,
or “How might things have been different?”

   •   Why any
of it matters, or “Who cares?” 

Duke-NUS has adapted Mr. Michaelsen’s method slightly. It calls its variation of the method “Team LEAD, ” which stands for learn, engage and develop. But the essentials of this version remain the same as Mr. Michaelsen’s method.

At the start of the year, students are divided into teams, which remain the same through the year. Before each class, they are given assignments to learn independently and in their teams. In the classroom there is an initial “readiness” phase in which they are tested, individually and in their teams, through multiple-choice questions on a scratch card.

“This is a good way to teach students to work in a team, to be able to express their opinion and critically analyze what other people say,” Dr. Kamei said.

After the readiness phase, they move on to specific case studies, tackled by applying their memorized knowledge, complemented by medical literature and notes.

“Faculty does not talk, but listens to the conversations of the students, who are still working in teams,” Dr. Kamei said. “The students have to explain and defend their answers because they could have found the right answer but for the wrong reasons.”

At regular intervals, as the course progresses, the students undergo peer evaluation focused on their ability to contribute to the team effort. The results of peer evaluation contribute about 10 percent to the final grade.

By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A04

The nation's best-known researcher on homework has taken a new look at the subject, and here is what Duke University professor Harris Cooper has to say:

Elementary school students get no academic benefit from homework -- except reading and some basic skills practice -- and yet schools require more than ever.

High school students studying until dawn probably are wasting their time because there is no academic benefit after two hours a night; for middle-schoolers, 1 1/2 hours.

And what's perhaps more important, he said, is that most teachers get little or no training on how to create homework assignments that advance learning.

Yet teachers themselves don't uniformly agree on something as basic as the purpose of homework (reviewing vs. learning new concepts), much less design or amount or even whether it should be graded. And the result can be inconsistency in assignments and confusion for students.

That is part of the reason some educators and authors are making new cases for the elimination of homework entirely, including in the new book "The Homework Myth," by Alfie Kohn.

Kohn points to family conflict, stress and Cooper's research as reasons for giving kids other things to do to develop their minds and bodies after school besides homework.

"I am always fascinated when research says one thing and we are all rushing in the other direction," Kohn said.

"It is striking that we have no evidence that there is any academic benefit in elementary school homework," he said. "Then people fall back on the self-discipline argument and how it helps students learn study skills. But that is an urban myth, except that people apply it in the suburbs, too."

Two high schools in Minnesota are using Pearson Education's WriteToLearn to help students build literacy skills and prepare for the new Minnesota writing assessment.

The schools are Dunwoody Academy High School, a new technical charter school in north Minneapolis administered by Dunwoody College, and Robbinsdale Cooper High School, part of the Robbinsdale Area Schools in New Hope, Minn.

With WriteToLearn, students practice essay writing and summarization skills, and their efforts are measured by a "Knowledge Analysis Technologies" (KAT) engine. The KAT engine is an automated assessment technology that evaluates the meaning of text by examining whole passages, not just grammatical correctness or spelling.

"WriteToLearn is an awesome program that gives each student feedback right away, which is something a teacher cannot possibly have time to do," said Duane Dutrieuille, dean of academic and student affairs at Dunwoody Academy High School.

High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don't start school until age 7.

Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world.