test scores =/= student achievement

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fade

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I'm not trying to belittle your tactics. I wish they worked for me. (I realize that it came across as belittling when I said that it didn't take much to see that etc. -- I was actually belittling the students who know this and still don't do it).

I tried to get group participation from my Honors Geology class. I assumed a group like that would want the best teaching experience I could provide. But they just wouldn't. They sighed and carried on about it. Same with grad classes. That's the real reason I came up with the compromise. I sort of force group thinking on them by making them connect the why to the what.
 

ElJuski

Staff member
Nah, I know you ain't belittlin' me. It's all gravy, baby. Teaching takes a huge skill set that most people outside of the profession don't realize. Hell, I'm still getting around to getting an official paycheck for it and every week I'm astounded at how much extra skills and knowledge I'm building just to be the shitty new guy.
 
I can only speak from personal experience, but at least for teaching English in Japan, a system built around standardized test-taking didn't actually have much effect on my students' abilities to actually speak and write in English.

If you asked them to translate:

"I will take this test in 2 hours."
and
"I'll take this test in 2 hours."

They would translate them perfectly, but would not be able to cognitively understand why the sentences were saying the same thing.

That's the kind of mindset that teaching to test seems to create, IMO. At the end of the day, you're not being taught the subject so you can use it outside of school, you're being taught how to pass a specific test on the subject that you'll never see again outside of school.
 
Memorization is easy to forget, i did it almost every year when i was actually bothering to learn for school, after 3 months of summer vacation 90% of stuff i had forgotten... actually understanding something makes it way easier to recall it later, like riding a bike.
 
C

Chibibar

Multiple intelligences is (mostly) a crock. Please, please, please, don't buy into it.
That's what half of my professors have said.[/QUOTE]


So what's the alternative? We've been taught multiple intelligences was a pretty well-accepted theory.[/QUOTE]

I believe in multiple intelligence. at least this is why.

emotional intelligence - while these people are not book smart or can calculate complex math in their head, they can listen and understand a great deal of things in life. They can pass great wisdom to others. Wisdom is emotional intelligence.

Book intelligence - these people can memorize stuff and spew it back out. Maybe it is not intelligence, but that what these test really focus on. What happen where in what year? etc etc. pretty much memorization stuff.

I know that some newer test suppose to teach students to use process and actually think and solve issues (like word problems) these kinds of test is hard for people who don't know how to make them. (like me)
 
Multiple intelligences is (mostly) a crock. Please, please, please, don't buy into it.
That's what half of my professors have said.[/quote]


So what's the alternative? We've been taught multiple intelligences was a pretty well-accepted theory.[/QUOTE]

Not even close to well-accepted. It is the theory of intelligence with the LEAST amount of support for it. Yet it is taught in every gen psych class and was snatched up by the education field real quick.

Here's the skinny on multiple intelligences: If you have a psychological construct, like musical intelligence, logical intelligence, etc., and you have a measure for it, your measures should NOT correlate with each other. They have to be independent if they are truly different constructs. Someone has to be able to have a high musical intelligence and EITHER a high, moderate, or low logical intelligence. These things cannot be linked, otherwise they are just expressions of a singular intelligence. You can probably guess where I'm going with this. The 7 (8, or more, depending on which version of multiple intelligences you are taught) different intelligences DO correlate with each other (many do, not all), which implies they are measure the same thing, not different things. On top of that, some of the multiple intelligences (like interpersonal intelligence) correlate with established measures of personality. Now, it is certainly possibly that those personality measures are just measures of intelligence, but in order to accept that you have to give up the idea of personality characteristics. Then everything becomes some type of intelligence.

So what else is there? A variety of options. Some favor fluid and crystallized intelligence as a distinction. Fluid is the ability to handle novel problems, creativity, etc. and crystallized refers to skills and knowledge that are learned in response to specific situations or problems. Another possibility is general intelligence (g) and specialized intelligence (s). g refers to an innate cognitive ability. It basically determines your maximum potential and affects ability on all tasks that require intelligence. s refers to the learned abilities, basically your training in a certain area (like music or math or poetry or psychology). It comes from experience and is affected by and limited by g but is derived from what you've learned. There are other theories as well, like the triarchic theory, which talks about practical intelligence and abstract intelligence, etc.

In my opinion, intelligence is extremely hard to disentangle from other things. In part, I think we have to accept that intelligence is in the eye of the beholder. In part, it is simply training. Einstein said the only reason he was considered a genius was because he spent more time thinking about physics than most other people. In the end, multiple intelligences doesn't explain anything. It offers a way to label or categorize but that is it. Yes, it is good to keep in mind that students are unique, with varying experiences and personalities. We don't serve them by classifying them by the way they think, especially when that classification system is flawed.

Btw, it turns out "learning styles" are bunk as well.

---------- Post added at 03:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:07 PM ----------

Multiple intelligences is (mostly) a crock. Please, please, please, don't buy into it.
You really need to back up something like that with a link or something, if you want us to take you seriously. Not saying your wrong, but you need to give us SOMETHING :D[/QUOTE]

Sorry. I had to rush off to class. I gave you a nice wall of text. If you want links, I can provide some but a lot of that stuff is relatively accurate on Wikipedia (under criticisms).
 

Cajungal

Staff member
If you can find anything I would like some of those sources if you can find them. :) My psychology professors both told me that, but it's only briefly mentioned in the textbooks.
 

ElJuski

Staff member
See, this is interesting hearing this from another professional in the field. I'm surprised because my current teacher hold her master's in psychology and her doctorate in pedagogy. So it's interesting to see somebody who has a doctorate in the field drop these examples.

Why are learning styles bunk? It's obvious that students have different learning preferences, at least. And what does this mean for students with disabilities that need specific adaptation in the classroom?
 
See, this is interesting hearing this from another professional in the field. I'm surprised because my current teacher hold her master's in psychology and her doctorate in pedagogy. So it's interesting to see somebody who has a doctorate in the field drop these examples.

Why are learning styles bunk? It's obvious that students have different learning preferences, at least. And what does this mean for students with disabilities that need specific adaptation in the classroom?
Preferences is different than styles, which implies a learning advantage under a specific modality. That simply isn't true. For the most part, the material drives the modality, not the ability of the student. Here's a nice youtube video and an accompanying article in American Educator (by the same psychologist as the video).



Article: http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/summer2005/cogsci.htm
 
Ok in all seriousness that was a fascinating video. Very interesting information. Also reaffirmed my desire to seek out a Psychology minor.
 

ElJuski

Staff member
Sweet deal. Thanks for the link. It makes sense to me. It DOES make me wonder why the education fields decided to sweep up apparent BS so quickly. I'm guessing because it rides on that touchy-feelie business. They loves some touchy-feelie business!
 
Sweet deal. Thanks for the link. It makes sense to me. It DOES make me wonder why the education fields decided to sweep up apparent BS so quickly. I'm guessing because it rides on that touchy-feelie business. They loves some touchy-feelie business!
I think you're on to something. In some ways that is good. We want caring teachers. In some ways it might get in the way with reasonable, evidence-based approaches to instruction. Every good teacher wants to find the BEST way to teach their class. They really do want their students to learn. It has to be a good combination of empathy/understanding for the diversity of their students and using that knowledge to effectively and appropriately teach them. We don't need a sterile, Skinnerian type of environment to do this. In fact, that probably is not the best environment to learn in. But we can't have our teachers just accepting anything that sounds good either. :-\
 

Cajungal

Staff member
That's exactly what it is--the touchy feelie business. It's getting to where the social lessons you're supposed to natural learn are being actively taught, and it's really weird and awkward. That doesn't necessarily have anything to do with this... it just aggravates me.
 

ElJuski

Staff member
I gotta admit, I'm really happy there are other teaching professionals and to-be-professionals here. Awesome perspective.
 
Do you have a transcript of that? I learn better from reading. ;)
See I understand what the video is saying but there are different styles that work better for some.

Like myself, I learn better in a classroom when the teacher is talking and discussing and writing it on the board, showing pictures, and videos. Where as if the teacher just assigns me a chapter to read, I can read the same text 5-6 times and still not memorize/learn it as well as if I was taught it in the classroom.
 
That's not just a difference in style, though. There is a change in the context, the way the information is interrelated, and depth to which you (or the student) is interacting with the material. In general passive learning == bad and active, engaged learning == good. So there is not just a style difference between reading a chapter and having an interactive, integrated lesson.

On a side note, I read about an odd memory phenomenon a while back where people remember information better if they believe it was generated by a person than if they believe it was generated by a computer. We are inherently social beings, so there may be some very powerful social influences that directly impact learning!
 

Cajungal

Staff member
Not only that, but few people are taught HOW to effectively learn/memorize, Hobo. I actually just did a presentation on this. Independent study is made so much easier if you know how to make connections and how to practice absorbing the information into your long term memory. Learning not to be passive while taking in information is the key, and knowing that rote memorization and simply reading chapters over and over won't get you far at all.

---------- Post added at 02:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:54 PM ----------

EXAMPLE:

This is just an elementary example. I wrote 5 stories for a lesson this past semester, using funny sentences that were soundalikes of states. It seems like it would be MORE work to learn these stories, but when pictures are added to shapes of the states AS I'm reading (using more senses, and therefore differentiating in a good and productive way, I feel...), students actually remembered it better than simply by looking at a map and reciting.

Lemme see if I can find those... Well one story was about "Sally West," who visited the southwest. She met an old asthmatic voodoo queen there named "Wheezy Anna." The humor helps people remember, too. Why do you think some people can easily quote Monty Python but not remember all the Presidents?
 
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