Michael Strong referred to his post from two years ago.
An alternative interpretation for the failure to replicate pedagogical genius might focus on the fact that there are no institutions in our society that support the replication of pedagogical success. Teaching is fundamentally a performance art – real time interactions in chaotic and complex human situations. There are no institutions in our society that provide for an environment in which master practitioners of this performance art systematically transfer their expertise.
Read the whole thing. The question I have is whether it is possible for master practitioners to “systematically transfer their expertise.” Elizabeth Green offers some examples–Deborah Ball and Doug Lemov–of master practitioners trying to transfer their expertise. That was not enough to convince me that this is a scalable process.
That might be too cynical.
A reasonably likely reality is that some number of master teachers of teachers could help some large mass of teachers with some native skill, motivation, etc. to reach a higher level of performance faster.
Some people who should seek employment in another field wouldn’t benefit. Some people who will eventually be good teachers wouldn’t get help from the coaching. But we might hope that many would get better faster.
I agree it won’t scale in the absolute sense (like say a telephone network does), but it may scale well enough to be a win.
One also wonders how much of teaching is a “do follow these best practices” field and how much is a “do NOT do these poor practices” field? Likely some of both I would think.
I would totally nail it if Peter Thiel asked me this one on a job interview. I think education largely serves to keep people away from jobs.
In a nutshell, student, you are a ZMP worker. We know the best way to train you would be to incorporate the actual job. But the winner-take-all economy is based on exclusion. So, you have to bear the cost and risk of proving you are the top ZMP we might allow through the gate.
I guess I should provide the context. One common theme that I’ve noticed is simply holding the student to a very high standard. But, if Jaime Escalante teaches kids calculus, what if they aren’t going to use calculus? I haven’t seen a Fourier transform let alone a Laplace transform since they tried to keep me out of my career. So, even if you succeed at improving education, have you really prepared them for the actual job?
I am of the “teaching is an art” mindset–which doesn’t mean that aspects of teaching can’t be mastered and even learned.
Teaching effectively also varies based on population. The skills for teaching algebra to kids with 4th grade math knowledge are quite different from teaching precalc to kids who are actually ready to learn the material, just as teaching AP US History to interested kids is quite different from teaching it to kids with 5th grade reading skills. And of course, then you have philosophical differences.
The reason we can’t teach teaching is because we have no agreement on the accepted body of knowledge or the correct way to teach. We can’t even agree that different teaching methods are needed for different populations. Green punted on this question, suggesting it was racist, when asked.
The charter school “ed schools” are not so much teaching how to teach as they are teaching how to discipline a class with an agreed upon method. I wrote about that here: https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2014/07/31/education-schools-prescriptive-training-and-academic-freedom/
I see multiple teaching styles which can all claim some legitimate measure of success, depending on the environment in which they are exercised. For example: Gabe Kotter’s bonding and life lessons, Robin Williams’ (Dead Poet’s Society) more intellectual and academic version of Kotter, drill sergeant disciplinarians who are able to effectively demand attention and effort, Feynman-style brilliant lecturers who deliver insight necessary to make the unintelligble intelligible, often via creative analogy, brilliant lecturers who push the boundary of their field via formalisms which are inaccessible to all but the brightest acolytes, etc.
My silly idea is a role-playing game analogy. Choose your character class (Knight, Archer, Orc, etc.), and then go slay monsters in the dungeon. If you have a sense of the characteristics of the dungeon ahead, you can make an informed choice of character class which will be more effective for that dungeon, yielding a higher probability of success. Of course, you still have to play that class well.
Theory would rather ignore differences in dungeons and differences in character classes. It would like to have a single characterization of all dungeons, likewise for character classes. Likewise, it tends to assume a perfect player. These are not necessarily methodological problems, just tendencies in tension with practical success.
Pure theory gives a new player very little ability to achieve perfection. Practice makes perfect. Also, the choice of character class should match the developing player’s innate style as well as the dungeon ahead. Some players by their very nature may be effectively restricted to a single class and are therefore only effective in certain dungeons.
Talking about “master practitioners” and separate institutions for training teachers is a distraction. The key issue is whether the system helps teachers to learn from their peers while they are on the job. In American public schools, apparently, there is little time set aside for this.
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/4/5959389/building-better-teacher-elizabeth-green-japan-teaching-math
Well, I’m still on the Null Hypothesis bandwagon (although it’s not really much of a bandwagon because nobody is on it except for a couple of contrarianish curmudgeons), so the whole debate is moot as far as I’m concerned.
The Brits are excellent at teaching Shakespearean acting. Perhaps we could learn from their techniques.
“Well, I’m still on the Null Hypothesis bandwagon (although it’s not really much of a bandwagon because nobody is on it except for a couple of contrarianish curmudgeons), so the whole debate is moot as far as I’m concerned.”
No, I’m a believer in Null Hypothesis, too. However, the hypothesis doesn’t (I presume) mean that education is unnecessary but that educational methods, curriculum, teachers, etc won’t affect academic achievement to any great degree.
I agree with that. Teaching algebra to kids with 8th grade calculation skills doesn’t mean they’ll learn any *more* algebra, or certainly not to any meaningful degree. However, teaching well might keep a kid engaged to learn more than he would otherwise, or learn how to learn, or feel competent, or any number of improvements that don’t change test scores but might change that kid’s personal life outcomes. We can’t measure these outcomes, but that’s why most of us teach.