Karen Fogle

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No methods are more effective than 1-1 instruction

May 3, 2015 By Karen Fogle 4 Comments

“Talent is not something to be found in the few; it is to be developed in the many.”

Dr. Benjamin Bloom’s research is known by everyone in the educational community. Dr. Bloom was one of the first experts to encourage teachers to require their students to learn and think at a higher, more critical level rather than the low level memorization work that occurs in most classrooms. His research regarding 1-1 instruction is a landmark study that still stands today.

Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem is an odd name for educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom’s discovery, first reported in 1984, that one-to-one tutoring isn’t just a little bit better than conventional classroom teaching:

Bloom found that the average student tutored one-to-one using mastery learning techniques performed two standard deviations better than students who learn via conventional instructional methods — that is, “the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class”. Additionally, the variation of the students’ achievement changed: “about 90% of the tutored students… attained the level of summative achievement reached by only the highest 20%” of the control class.

The two-sigma part refers to average performance of ordinary students going up by two standard deviations when they received one-to-one tutoring and worked on material until they mastered it, and the problem part refers to the fact that such tutoring doesn’t come cheap.

My first reaction is surprise at the degree of the effect, but it should be obvious that advancing 30 students in lock-step means that many will be bored, a few will be in the sweet spot, and many will fall further and further behind, as the material builds on previous material they never learned.

So, my conclusion would be that conventional classroom teaching is largely a waste of time — but that’s not where educational experts place their emphasis:

Although much recent attention has focused on gaps in the achievement of different groups of students, the problem has been with us for decades. This paper presents the problem as one of reducing variation in students’ achievement, and reviews the work of renowned educator Benjamin Bloom on this problem. Bloom argued that to reduce variation in students’ achievement and to have all students learn well, we must increase variation in instructional approaches and learning time.

I suppose they see it as Bloom’s Paradox.

In his original paper, Bloom notes that a full-size classroom can get one-sigma results by switching to mastery learning, where students are tested not just for a final grade on a unit but to uncover where they need to do further corrective work, so they keep at it until they get it right.

It is odd, when you think about it, that we give students As, Bs, and Cs, and then advance them all to the next course, when they really should study the material until they earn a solid A before moving on — unless the goal of education isn’t conveying information but ranking students.

Read more: B. S. Bloom (1913–1999) – Educational, Learning, Objectives, and Characteristics – StateUniversity.comhttp://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1791/Bloom-B-S-1913-1999.html#ixzz2BbBierHi

Filed Under: Blog, Schooling

School is Dead, Everett Reimer

January 25, 2015 By Karen Fogle Leave a Comment

This is one of my favorite books on alternative education because it rang true with what I saw happening in the future.  In this book he proposed that there would be at least 3 kinds of educators who would be in strong demand in the future. This book was written in 1971 before the internet was a household name. The internet has changed how information is used and accessed. His description of the kinds of educators needed in the future seem to really apply now, 40 years later…

  1. Architects and administrators of Educational Resource Networks. They would understand knowledge, people and the societies they live in. They will need to be dedicated to the ideas of student directed, individualized education.
  2. Teachers who can help design effective individual educational programs, diagnose educational difficulties and prescribe effective remedies. People will find they need advice and assistance in selecting learning programs, choosing skill models, discovering peers and finding leadership in difficult endeavors.
  3. Leaders will be needed in every branch of learning. Leaders remain one of the vital education resources that learners must be helped to find. The most fundamental resource is the world in which most people have a good relationship with others.

I have been training teachers for these roles for 30 years!

 

Filed Under: Books

5 Dangerous Things you should let your kids do

August 3, 2014 By Karen Fogle Leave a Comment

This is one of my favorite Ted Talks. Do you let your children experience their power?

At TED U, Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, spells out 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do — and why a little danger is good for both kids and grownups.

 

 

Filed Under: Ted Talks

Peter Gray: The Decline of Play

July 9, 2014 By Karen Fogle 3 Comments

Filed Under: Ted Talks

Move! Your brain will love you for it

April 6, 2014 By Karen Fogle Leave a Comment

Physical activity is directly connected to both body and brain health…see why it’s so important! 

Filed Under: Learning and the Brain

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