I just went to the new evaluation training which was extremely scary to me. The only way you can be rated a highly effective teacher is by doing group work. As a teacher I often ask my students for feedback and in the last ten years I have less than 1% of my students express that they would want more group work from me.
What truly bothers me about this model is that they are saying that only one method of teaching works. That is the method designed by a person who did all of her research with middle and elementary school students. A system that does not allow for flexibility in the way the material is presented seems quite unfair to me.
When I questioned the presenter she told me "that there is no way to be highly effective if your lesson does not have group work. She then went on to say do not worry if you are not highly effective it does not matter". So we have an evaluation system that does not motivate me to be the best? Does that make sense.
Another ironic thing was that the person delivering the training did a straight lecture with very little interaction and powerpoints that would put most people to sleep. Now that is the model for me? Man to we need some smart people to get into this field and fix many of the problems.
So please be honest with me, do you have to do group work to be effective? Are there teachers you have seen or have that are effective without this method? While I might not be a highly effective teacher it is not my style but other things that prevent me from accomplishing this. I would accept that what is hard for me to accept that the socratic lecture discussion style can not be highly effective.
Your thoughts. Honest is always welcome and cherished on this blog. So if I am wrong challenge me and let us have a great debate. Tell me if
The insistence on group work is but a part of the pervasive "pathological egalitarianism" in educational thinking. The "everyone gets what they need" mentality is nothing but semi-diluted Marxist thought. The call for group work was not heard, as far as I know, before the emergence of the "New Left" in the late 1960s. The advocates of this approach to education come from this movement whether they realize it or not. The rage for group work comes from post-modernist deconstructionism as well. There is no objective knowledge, according to this school, so as long as certain "skills" are mastered, it doesn't matter what knowledge is actually acquired. There is also the strain of thought, not unconnected from the aforementioned schools, that derives from Dewey's "progressive" philosophy; to wit, that things matter, not words. Kids should learn about things, not words. The goal of education is not excellence, but equality. While a certain basal political equality is, and should be, a goal of our society, without true excellence the future holds only decline. But according to group work advocates as long as we all decline together, that's fine.
ReplyDeleteA long line of paragons of Western thought are rolling in their graves: Bentham, Mill, Nietzsche. Karl Marx, on the other hand, is smiling from beyond the grave.