The mind-brain conundrum notwithstanding, learning obviously takes place within the brain. The parts of the brain involved in learning are manifold and include the reticular system of the brainstem, the amygdala, hippocampus, and thalamus, the sensory cortices – visual/occipital, auditory/temporal, tactile/parietal – and the associative areas throughout the brain and especially in the frontal and prefrontal cortex. Learning also involves the motor cortex and the cerebellum. It requires that sensory, attentional, memory, associative, and retrieval processes take place in a more or less coordinated fashion; like a concert.
Studies show that stress experienced prior to any learning effort impedes memory and learning. This is because stress floods the system with adrenaline and glucocorticoid secretions from the adrenal gland. While adrenaline marshals the body’s resources to fight or run away – rarely appropriate or even feasible responses to most modern stressors – it narrows focus, giving it a tunnel-vision feel, and overwhelms the emotional amygdala while suppressing the hippocampus whose job it is to move experience into long-term memory. Curiously, adrenaline given following memory tasks improves recall.
Glucocorticoids are produced by the adrenal cortex. These hormones back up adrenaline through their influence on mineral absorption and muscle and fat metabolism required for sustained effort. Again, most modern stressors do not require sustained physical responses, so glucocorticoid secretion is in some sense redundant. However, too many stressors over too short a period of time produces a buildup of glucocorticoids, and elevated levels of these neurochemicals actually damage the dopamine neurons in the hippocampus. The long-term effect is diminished capacity for memory and learning. Stress is harmful, not only to the learning process, but to the physical systems of the brain in which learning takes place.
A notorious bumper sticker reads, “I survived Catholic school.” It’s ruefully funny, but what does it really mean? That the school experience was fraught with stress, but the person displaying the bumper sticker endured and weathered that stress? That the famously – albeit stereotypically – harsh nuns inflicted physical and mental punishment on their charges? How much more might the victim of an abusive educational system have learned had he or she not suffered daily threats, ridicule, or frequent corporal punishment. The adolescent (middle school and high school) social milieu is tough enough without layering institutional stressors on top of it.
Teachers have a great impact on their students. Every adult carries indelible images of both kind and cruel teachers. Neurologist Martha Denckla states: “Every teacher is a brain surgeon… making little dendrites sprout and connect up neurons. So we are always training the brain.” Likewise, every teacher has the power to do harm. Sarcasm, ridicule, and excessive punitiveness have no place in the teacher’s bag of tricks. These things damage developing brains and squelch learning.
Good teachers harness their students’ innate impulse to learn as well as their creative bent. Creativity results from hard work carried forth in a minimally stressful environment. Schools that promote creativity emphasize cooperation – that uses the associative parts of the brain – over competition because competition is inherently stressful and often (note that some individuals, children and adults alike, perceive the stress associated with competition as eustress – good stress that does not trigger a buildup of glucocorticoids) interferes with the playful interworkings of the creative brain.
Good schools possess a culture of tolerance and respect among students and between students and teachers. Relationship is important. Stress is minimized and learning is, therefore, maximized.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Saturday, June 19, 2004
Who We Are and How We Present
The Galloway School – Upper Learning Perspective
By Mr. MM, Dr. GK, and Mr. HK
Defining who we are as a school and how we communicate that self-image to insider (Upper Learning teachers; the Board of Trustees; our students and their parents; Middle Learning students and their parents; Early Learning parents) and outsider (other schools; the broader community; applicants and their parents; colleges) audiences:
We are an institution that supports, promotes, celebrates, and reveres the primacy and worth of the individual, and this leads to child-centered approaches to teaching and learning.
Philosophy
· we hew to the philosophy of The Galloway School
· we adopt humanistic as opposed hierarchic philosophies; democratic as opposed to authoritarian approaches
· we teach the child as opposed to the subject or the class
· we understand and accept that it is imperative to take students from where they are (with respect to their diversity) to where they should be – to help them become who they are
· we put the child at the center
· we continuously strive to make Galloway a good and safe place for each student, not just some of them
· we stress cooperation over competition while acknowledging the uses of competition
Nature of the Child
· we accept and glory in the diversity of learners (development, background, neurology, differentiated abilities)
· we accept that the student may come to us either as a proven learner or as an inchoate learner
Relationship
· we are aware of how do we talk about children and youths; we avoid the zoo or laboratory specimen model; the student is always a human being, first and foremost, and as such, is always accorded due respect
· we do not gossip about the student, use sarcasm, or demean him or her in any way
· our conversations about the student are always solution oriented
· we explicitly acknowledge the teacher-student relationship – teaching and learning are social activities, and, as such, are personalized
Reflection & Best Practice
· we routinely reflect on what we do; indeed, reflection is organically enmeshed in all that we practice
· we, as continuous, life-long learners, study, reflect upon, and apply best teaching practice
· we strive to understand and apply the concept of mastery learning
· we design our teaching around essential questions that, in turn, drive both learning activities and demonstrations of mastery
· we reflect on cultural and technical ramifications of the mastery learning model
· we reflect on the difference between freedom in the classroom versus license; professionalism – this goes beyond paperwork professionalism
· we accept that one of the roles of the colleague is professional oversight; there are joys and burdens of collegiality (or freedoms and responsibilities)
· we seek out critical friends who accept responsibility for helping maintain a professional dyad; who are neither a rubber stamp nor solely part of a support group
· we act as a critical friend to colleagues
· we focus on the process of learning and on growth rather than on grades
Curriculum
· we teach reading in all subjects – critical literary and textual analysis; reading for pleasure and reading for information
· we teach writing not only in English, but in all disciplines
· we teach problem solving, a divergent or convergent process rather than a linear quest for putative correct answers
· we teach effective communication in a variety of languages including English, Spanish, French, and Latin
· we acknowledge that valuing and moral development are a part of all curricula
· we teach students how to think critically rather than what to think
We believe that if we accept and act on these things, that if we focus on our vision, then the externals – what we expect of all graduates of The Galloway School, college acceptances, public relations, admissions and retention, and communications with all constituencies of the school – will fall into place.
By Mr. MM, Dr. GK, and Mr. HK
Defining who we are as a school and how we communicate that self-image to insider (Upper Learning teachers; the Board of Trustees; our students and their parents; Middle Learning students and their parents; Early Learning parents) and outsider (other schools; the broader community; applicants and their parents; colleges) audiences:
We are an institution that supports, promotes, celebrates, and reveres the primacy and worth of the individual, and this leads to child-centered approaches to teaching and learning.
Philosophy
· we hew to the philosophy of The Galloway School
· we adopt humanistic as opposed hierarchic philosophies; democratic as opposed to authoritarian approaches
· we teach the child as opposed to the subject or the class
· we understand and accept that it is imperative to take students from where they are (with respect to their diversity) to where they should be – to help them become who they are
· we put the child at the center
· we continuously strive to make Galloway a good and safe place for each student, not just some of them
· we stress cooperation over competition while acknowledging the uses of competition
Nature of the Child
· we accept and glory in the diversity of learners (development, background, neurology, differentiated abilities)
· we accept that the student may come to us either as a proven learner or as an inchoate learner
Relationship
· we are aware of how do we talk about children and youths; we avoid the zoo or laboratory specimen model; the student is always a human being, first and foremost, and as such, is always accorded due respect
· we do not gossip about the student, use sarcasm, or demean him or her in any way
· our conversations about the student are always solution oriented
· we explicitly acknowledge the teacher-student relationship – teaching and learning are social activities, and, as such, are personalized
Reflection & Best Practice
· we routinely reflect on what we do; indeed, reflection is organically enmeshed in all that we practice
· we, as continuous, life-long learners, study, reflect upon, and apply best teaching practice
· we strive to understand and apply the concept of mastery learning
· we design our teaching around essential questions that, in turn, drive both learning activities and demonstrations of mastery
· we reflect on cultural and technical ramifications of the mastery learning model
· we reflect on the difference between freedom in the classroom versus license; professionalism – this goes beyond paperwork professionalism
· we accept that one of the roles of the colleague is professional oversight; there are joys and burdens of collegiality (or freedoms and responsibilities)
· we seek out critical friends who accept responsibility for helping maintain a professional dyad; who are neither a rubber stamp nor solely part of a support group
· we act as a critical friend to colleagues
· we focus on the process of learning and on growth rather than on grades
Curriculum
· we teach reading in all subjects – critical literary and textual analysis; reading for pleasure and reading for information
· we teach writing not only in English, but in all disciplines
· we teach problem solving, a divergent or convergent process rather than a linear quest for putative correct answers
· we teach effective communication in a variety of languages including English, Spanish, French, and Latin
· we acknowledge that valuing and moral development are a part of all curricula
· we teach students how to think critically rather than what to think
We believe that if we accept and act on these things, that if we focus on our vision, then the externals – what we expect of all graduates of The Galloway School, college acceptances, public relations, admissions and retention, and communications with all constituencies of the school – will fall into place.
Thursday, June 17, 2004
The Galloway Teacher's Hierarchy of Being
(Not unlike Maslow’s Hierarchy -- Pyramid -- of Needs*)
At the lowest level of being a Galloway teacher is daily survival: maintaining a grade book; remembering the schedule; negotiating the press of adolescents in the West Wing Hall.
The next level relates to pedagogy and best teaching practice. Once a teacher has grown reasonably confident about day-to-day survival, he or she can focus on building a repertoire of lessons, refining classroom management skills, differentiating instruction, and generally improving teaching performance and effectiveness.
The penultimate level is the teacher-student relationship (also teacher-teacher). If students are to learn, and if teachers are to reap any of the rewards of their craft, there must be a social relationship based on mutual respect and acceptance.
The highest level – the pinnacle of Galloway being – is the Galloway Way. The Galloway Way that can be named is not the true Galloway Way. The Galloway Way draws children to learning without compulsion. The Galloway Way possesses children without holding them. Through the Galloway Way, children become who they are within a social matrix of children learning from adults and adults learning from children.
*Maslow’s hierarchy has as its lowest level the biological needs – air, water, and food. If these requirements are met, a human being can seek to satisfy safety needs – shelter from the storm, safety from physical and emotional harm or abuse. Once one is fed and safe, one can think about belonging – to families, friendships, partnerships, and societies. Belonging frees one to have a positive and relational image of one’s self. This, in turn, allows one to love fully and to be loved. At the peak of the pyramid is the striving of all human beings to complete themselves; to grow always; to know one’s self; to be fully human. In Maslow’s words, the highest level of humanness is to be “self-actualizing.”
Teacher Evaluation in Upper Learning at Galloway
In Upper Learning at The Galloway School, we have established an approach to teacher evaluation that is consistent with the philosophy of the school. It involves reflection and introspection on one’s teaching strengths and weaknesses followed by formative and summative conversations with the Upper Learning Principal. Historically, these conversations have been ameliorative as well as problem solving in their orientation, and they have been both helpful and productive of growth. It would be useful to add scheduled conversations between teachers and their critical friend and with the learning specialist.
● Philosophy of education criteria include understanding and accepting the Galloway philosophy; possessing essentially humane attitudes towards adolescents.
● Best practice criteria include staying current with best practice literature, attending workshops or staff development, and being involved in some sort of mentor relationship – eg, a critical friend dyad.
● Professionalism criteria include being at one’s teaching post, being available to students, sustaining membership in a critical friend dyad, dealing with paperwork and ancillary responsibilities (for example, advising and supervising students), and carrying out committee work (followship and leadership).
● Content criteria include thoroughly understanding one’s discipline(s) at both microscopic and macroscopic levels.
● Communication criteria include providing timely and effective feedback to students and parents and to one’s critical friend (see earlier post).
Traditional clinical supervision checklists and observations, taken by themselves, are ineffective tools for teacher evaluation. Just as relationship between student and teacher is paramount if learning is to occur, so too is relationship among colleagues if teachers are to grow in their professions. Relationship requires mutual respect and trust.
Upper Learning teachers welcome administrators, the guidance and college counselors, and the learning specialist into their classrooms because they value what other professionals have to offer with respect to improving teaching practice. Upper Learning teachers are also encouraged to reflect on best practice and to work to continuously improve their craft, a process that may involve consultations with administrators, mentors, critical friends and other colleagues, and learning specialists or psychologists, along with student evaluations. In addition, Upper Learning teachers are open to constructive parent feedback.
● Philosophy of education criteria include understanding and accepting the Galloway philosophy; possessing essentially humane attitudes towards adolescents.
● Best practice criteria include staying current with best practice literature, attending workshops or staff development, and being involved in some sort of mentor relationship – eg, a critical friend dyad.
● Professionalism criteria include being at one’s teaching post, being available to students, sustaining membership in a critical friend dyad, dealing with paperwork and ancillary responsibilities (for example, advising and supervising students), and carrying out committee work (followship and leadership).
● Content criteria include thoroughly understanding one’s discipline(s) at both microscopic and macroscopic levels.
● Communication criteria include providing timely and effective feedback to students and parents and to one’s critical friend (see earlier post).
Traditional clinical supervision checklists and observations, taken by themselves, are ineffective tools for teacher evaluation. Just as relationship between student and teacher is paramount if learning is to occur, so too is relationship among colleagues if teachers are to grow in their professions. Relationship requires mutual respect and trust.
Upper Learning teachers welcome administrators, the guidance and college counselors, and the learning specialist into their classrooms because they value what other professionals have to offer with respect to improving teaching practice. Upper Learning teachers are also encouraged to reflect on best practice and to work to continuously improve their craft, a process that may involve consultations with administrators, mentors, critical friends and other colleagues, and learning specialists or psychologists, along with student evaluations. In addition, Upper Learning teachers are open to constructive parent feedback.
1988 Position Paper on the Galloway Philosophy
Galloway School and its community philosophy -- and the educational philosophy of its founder, Elliott Galloway -- are inseparable. Central to this philosophy are several assumptions: children learn best when they are drawn rather than pushed to learning, when they are comfortable, when they are respected, and when they are challenged.
Children from ages two through the end of high school enjoy learning at Galloway School. Their learning experiences encompass structured group interactions as well as teacher-directed activities, free-play, physical skill development, problem solving, and socialization, all across broad curricula. Yet, even with the range of activities that take place within and without the walls of Galloway School, each experience is thought out with respect to individual differences among students. Children are drawn to learning at Galloway because they are neither asked to do things for which they are not ready nor held back when they are able to move ahead.
Children from ages two through the end of high school are comfortable at Galloway School. They sit in circles and around tables rather than in uniform rows of desks. The overall atmosphere is caring, encouraging, and conducive to the development of self-esteem. Students, parents, and teachers recognize that individuals develop along diverse pathways and at different rates. Children have different styles of learning, different backgrounds, different interests, and different aspirations. At Galloway School, respect for these differences is paramount. It is a respect that supersedes simple expediency and that guides the entire planning and teaching processes at Galloway. It is, finally, a respect that permeates the Galloway community of children, parents, and teachers.
Children from the age of two through the end of high school are challenged at Galloway School. A low student-teacher ratio of ten to one makes it possible for teachers to effectively address individual differences. Throughout Early and Middle Learning, the development of problem-solving skills is an important part of the curriculum. This focus continues in Upper Learning as students are encouraged to select from an array of rigorous, college-preparatory courses. The core curriculum in Upper Learning is four years of English, three of mathematics, science, and social studies and two of foreign language; students throughout all levels of the school are exposed to music, art, and physical culture. The whole program at Galloway School is crafted to bring children into themselves, to bring them to a point of acceptance of responsibility for their actions, their freedoms, and their learning for life.
Galloway School is many things. It is a place, an idea, a process, a student body, and a faculty. It is all of these things together and more. Galloway School is a community of learners and doers and thinkers.
Children from ages two through the end of high school enjoy learning at Galloway School. Their learning experiences encompass structured group interactions as well as teacher-directed activities, free-play, physical skill development, problem solving, and socialization, all across broad curricula. Yet, even with the range of activities that take place within and without the walls of Galloway School, each experience is thought out with respect to individual differences among students. Children are drawn to learning at Galloway because they are neither asked to do things for which they are not ready nor held back when they are able to move ahead.
Children from ages two through the end of high school are comfortable at Galloway School. They sit in circles and around tables rather than in uniform rows of desks. The overall atmosphere is caring, encouraging, and conducive to the development of self-esteem. Students, parents, and teachers recognize that individuals develop along diverse pathways and at different rates. Children have different styles of learning, different backgrounds, different interests, and different aspirations. At Galloway School, respect for these differences is paramount. It is a respect that supersedes simple expediency and that guides the entire planning and teaching processes at Galloway. It is, finally, a respect that permeates the Galloway community of children, parents, and teachers.
Children from the age of two through the end of high school are challenged at Galloway School. A low student-teacher ratio of ten to one makes it possible for teachers to effectively address individual differences. Throughout Early and Middle Learning, the development of problem-solving skills is an important part of the curriculum. This focus continues in Upper Learning as students are encouraged to select from an array of rigorous, college-preparatory courses. The core curriculum in Upper Learning is four years of English, three of mathematics, science, and social studies and two of foreign language; students throughout all levels of the school are exposed to music, art, and physical culture. The whole program at Galloway School is crafted to bring children into themselves, to bring them to a point of acceptance of responsibility for their actions, their freedoms, and their learning for life.
Galloway School is many things. It is a place, an idea, a process, a student body, and a faculty. It is all of these things together and more. Galloway School is a community of learners and doers and thinkers.
Monday, June 14, 2004
Who Should Teach?
My critical friend* once asked me what the requirements are for being a teacher. I responded, without having to think about it too much, that to be a teacher you must like kids, have a sense of humor, and be flexible. On reflection, I have decided that this is a pretty good answer, although I might add that it is a good idea to know something about your subject(s) as well as about child or adolescent psychology either from pursuing academic or self-taught pathways and from experience. To expand on the notion of liking kids, I would say that you must be interested in them, as well; you must be essentially a humanist and a humanitarian. High school teachers that are excellent teachers possess all of the attributes of teachers of younger children; however, they also know their disciplines very well, keep up with what's going on in their field, and they are passionate about their content. These first two can be faked; the last one can't.
* critical friend -- a professional colleague who believes in you but who is not afraid to tell you the truth about your teaching practice. To be in a critical friend relationship requires understanding, empathy, honesty, diplomacy, and an absence of hypersensitivity. It is different from a mentoring relationship because the partners are equal (which is not to say that you don't learn from a critical friend.).
* critical friend -- a professional colleague who believes in you but who is not afraid to tell you the truth about your teaching practice. To be in a critical friend relationship requires understanding, empathy, honesty, diplomacy, and an absence of hypersensitivity. It is different from a mentoring relationship because the partners are equal (which is not to say that you don't learn from a critical friend.).
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Comparing Progressive and Traditional Educational Approaches
Progressive Schools – Progressive Education
Comparing Progressive and Traditional Education:
Progressive Education
• progressive education is child-centered.
• each child is honored and celebrated.
• the teacher-learner relationship is considered primary – a pre-cursor to effective teaching and student learning.
Traditional Education
• traditional education is subject/content and classroom oriented.
• the individual is largely subsumed by the group.
• the teacher-learner relationship is secondary and hierarchical.
Progressive Education
• progressive education is characterized by a whole-child orientation: cognitive, social, and emotional development of each student are considered key to that student's educational and personal growth.
Traditional Education
• in a traditional educational environment, each child is treated the same. Students are generally assumed to be equally ready to learn the prescribed content. Individual differences in background and social/cognitive/emotional/physical/moral development are largely ignored except insofar as they allow students to be grouped by ability/achievement into advanced, average or remedial tracks. Students with learning differences are largely expected to keep up by compensating on their own for attention, executive-function, and psychosocial deficits.
An example of progressive approaches to teaching and learning:
Two students – who happen to be brother and sister – take a required computer course. The brother is a techno-wizard and is given the opportunity to work with other students in the capacity of assistant teacher while at the same time pursuing Java (the language of AP Computer Science) programming. The sister, an artist, has little interest in computers as anything other than fancy typewriters; she is invited to explore graphics protocols. Both students become engrossed in their differentiated tasks. Both master the basic requirements of the course; one earns the highest possible score on the AP Computer Science exam, while the other produces original and aesthetically pleasing fractal art.
Progressive Education
• students actively participate in constructing their own learning, building their own under-standing, and integrating skills, information, and concepts.
• progressive education is service oriented; students have opportunities to give back to their communities on a voluntary basis.
Traditional Education
• learning is primarily prescribed by curriculum guides, textbooks, and standardized measures of achievement. Grades and standardized test scores dictate the track to which a student is assigned. All students complete the same work and are evaluated in the same way, usually through paper and pencil tests over content knowledge.
• community service has only recently become a part of traditional education where it tends to be prescribed and required.
Progressive Education
• subjects are often integrated and taught in interdisciplinary ways.
• in progressive education, ethics and morality are explicit parts of all curricula.
• all students succeed, albeit in different ways.
• cooperation is stressed over competition.
Traditional Education
• subjects are treated largely as separate entities; inter-disciplinary instruction is comparatively rare.
• morality and character development are thought to lie within the domain of students' parents or of religious institutions.
• if one student earns an “A”, another will earn an “F”. Some students fail.
• students compete against one another and are compared to each other.
Progressive Education
• learning atmosphere is characterized by low anxiety and high challenge.
•process orientated: students learn critical thinking skills, cooperative social skills, and adaptability within a broad framework of subjects and disciplines.
• features continuous progress – students are met where they are and moved toward who they are to be. Students move on once they have mastered skills, processes, and content knowledge.
Traditional Education
• learning atmosphere is often characterized by high anxiety – low challenge and boredom for gifted students and fear of failure by average students.
• product oriented: graduates who have learned the information required by mandated curriculum standards are thought of as the end product of a traditional education.
• a goal is to make curricula "teacher proof", meaning that students will learn the content irrespective of the skills, knowledge, and resourcefulness of individual teachers. The teacher uses the same methods, materials, and evaluations for all students.
Progressive Education
• characterized by differentiation by teachers with respect to instructional strategies, curriculum, and the way in which standards are met.
• characterized by relatively high levels of choice by students with respect to course of study, learning modalities, dress.
Traditional Education
• students have few choices as to what classes they take and even fewer choices as to how they demonstrate their mastery in a given class (performance on tests).
• characterized by explicit dress codes for students and teachers, and often by uniforms for students.
An example of progressive approaches to teaching and learning:
Three students comprise a problem-solving triad in a physics class. One is a superior math student who has shown herself capable of quickly mastering any new type of problem. She divides her group work time between tutoring her partners, who are not so facile as she, and finding – with the help of the teacher -- difficult problems with which to challenge herself. All members of the group benefit. By teaching others, the physics ace cements her understanding of processes and content. At the same time, her partners learn from more one-on-one instruction than the teacher alone can feasibly provide. As the partners practice with core problems, the ace pursues advanced problems.
Note:
Many traditional schools exhibit some progressive education characteristics – for example, approximations of differentiated instruction, mixed-ability classrooms, cooperative learning, and so-called authentic assessment. Many teachers in traditional schools, despite a climate that does not reward progressive approaches, intuitively employ progressive methods. Many schools that are predominantly progressive possess traditional attributes, particularly at the high school level. For example, they may use numerical grades, and offer AP classes or honors curricula. They are more content-driven as dictated by the conundrum of college preparation.
Does progressive education work?
Progressive education is a rich Western (and Eastern) educational tradition. In the United States in 1918, the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education promulgated a set of Cardinal Principles of education that included health, command of fundamental processes, worthy home membership, vocation, citizenship, worthy use of leisure time, and ethical character. These principles are at the heart of a progressive education movement whose proponents include Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, John Dewey, Jerome Bruner, John Gardner, Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, and Maria Montessori.
Students educated in progressive school perform as well as students in traditional schools on all measures of learning and achievement. In addition, once they enter the world of work, they are better problem-solvers, they are more adaptable to change, and they are better work-team members than their traditionally educated peers.
One of the reasons that the United States maintains an edge in technical inventiveness and general creativity is that progressive approaches have been a significant part of American education since the early 1900's. That the U.S. has begun to lose ground in the inventive/creative realm is attributable to a resurgence of strictly traditional approaches under the guise of efficiency and accountability.
The educational and social science literature explicitly validates many aspects of progressive education; other aspects are supported anecdotally. Progressive education provides teachers and students multiple pathways toward meeting real-world educational standards.
What impedes progressive education in the Twenty-First Century?
The current political climate seeks simplistic and inexpensive solutions to the problems of education in America, specifically, over-emphasis on testing for specific content standards that results in so-called ability grouping or tracking of students. A politics-imbued educational philosophy that attempts to take the teacher-learner relationship out of the education equation. Many families have sought to escape the problems of public education by sending their children to private schools or by home-schooling them. Parents expect their children to live better – meaning materially more successfully -- than they, themselves, have lived. For example, they expect their children to attend prestigious colleges, to score well on standardized tests, and to secure high paying jobs. These expectations can yield an emphasis on material wealth over ethical character and lead to a sense of entitlement among students, especially those in the higher socio-economic strata of society. Parents place too early and too much emphasis on learning ultra-specific skills such as ballet, sports, and foreign languages – the so-called hurried child syndrome.
Comparing Progressive and Traditional Education:
Progressive Education
• progressive education is child-centered.
• each child is honored and celebrated.
• the teacher-learner relationship is considered primary – a pre-cursor to effective teaching and student learning.
Traditional Education
• traditional education is subject/content and classroom oriented.
• the individual is largely subsumed by the group.
• the teacher-learner relationship is secondary and hierarchical.
Progressive Education
• progressive education is characterized by a whole-child orientation: cognitive, social, and emotional development of each student are considered key to that student's educational and personal growth.
Traditional Education
• in a traditional educational environment, each child is treated the same. Students are generally assumed to be equally ready to learn the prescribed content. Individual differences in background and social/cognitive/emotional/physical/moral development are largely ignored except insofar as they allow students to be grouped by ability/achievement into advanced, average or remedial tracks. Students with learning differences are largely expected to keep up by compensating on their own for attention, executive-function, and psychosocial deficits.
An example of progressive approaches to teaching and learning:
Two students – who happen to be brother and sister – take a required computer course. The brother is a techno-wizard and is given the opportunity to work with other students in the capacity of assistant teacher while at the same time pursuing Java (the language of AP Computer Science) programming. The sister, an artist, has little interest in computers as anything other than fancy typewriters; she is invited to explore graphics protocols. Both students become engrossed in their differentiated tasks. Both master the basic requirements of the course; one earns the highest possible score on the AP Computer Science exam, while the other produces original and aesthetically pleasing fractal art.
Progressive Education
• students actively participate in constructing their own learning, building their own under-standing, and integrating skills, information, and concepts.
• progressive education is service oriented; students have opportunities to give back to their communities on a voluntary basis.
Traditional Education
• learning is primarily prescribed by curriculum guides, textbooks, and standardized measures of achievement. Grades and standardized test scores dictate the track to which a student is assigned. All students complete the same work and are evaluated in the same way, usually through paper and pencil tests over content knowledge.
• community service has only recently become a part of traditional education where it tends to be prescribed and required.
Progressive Education
• subjects are often integrated and taught in interdisciplinary ways.
• in progressive education, ethics and morality are explicit parts of all curricula.
• all students succeed, albeit in different ways.
• cooperation is stressed over competition.
Traditional Education
• subjects are treated largely as separate entities; inter-disciplinary instruction is comparatively rare.
• morality and character development are thought to lie within the domain of students' parents or of religious institutions.
• if one student earns an “A”, another will earn an “F”. Some students fail.
• students compete against one another and are compared to each other.
Progressive Education
• learning atmosphere is characterized by low anxiety and high challenge.
•process orientated: students learn critical thinking skills, cooperative social skills, and adaptability within a broad framework of subjects and disciplines.
• features continuous progress – students are met where they are and moved toward who they are to be. Students move on once they have mastered skills, processes, and content knowledge.
Traditional Education
• learning atmosphere is often characterized by high anxiety – low challenge and boredom for gifted students and fear of failure by average students.
• product oriented: graduates who have learned the information required by mandated curriculum standards are thought of as the end product of a traditional education.
• a goal is to make curricula "teacher proof", meaning that students will learn the content irrespective of the skills, knowledge, and resourcefulness of individual teachers. The teacher uses the same methods, materials, and evaluations for all students.
Progressive Education
• characterized by differentiation by teachers with respect to instructional strategies, curriculum, and the way in which standards are met.
• characterized by relatively high levels of choice by students with respect to course of study, learning modalities, dress.
Traditional Education
• students have few choices as to what classes they take and even fewer choices as to how they demonstrate their mastery in a given class (performance on tests).
• characterized by explicit dress codes for students and teachers, and often by uniforms for students.
An example of progressive approaches to teaching and learning:
Three students comprise a problem-solving triad in a physics class. One is a superior math student who has shown herself capable of quickly mastering any new type of problem. She divides her group work time between tutoring her partners, who are not so facile as she, and finding – with the help of the teacher -- difficult problems with which to challenge herself. All members of the group benefit. By teaching others, the physics ace cements her understanding of processes and content. At the same time, her partners learn from more one-on-one instruction than the teacher alone can feasibly provide. As the partners practice with core problems, the ace pursues advanced problems.
Note:
Many traditional schools exhibit some progressive education characteristics – for example, approximations of differentiated instruction, mixed-ability classrooms, cooperative learning, and so-called authentic assessment. Many teachers in traditional schools, despite a climate that does not reward progressive approaches, intuitively employ progressive methods. Many schools that are predominantly progressive possess traditional attributes, particularly at the high school level. For example, they may use numerical grades, and offer AP classes or honors curricula. They are more content-driven as dictated by the conundrum of college preparation.
Does progressive education work?
Progressive education is a rich Western (and Eastern) educational tradition. In the United States in 1918, the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education promulgated a set of Cardinal Principles of education that included health, command of fundamental processes, worthy home membership, vocation, citizenship, worthy use of leisure time, and ethical character. These principles are at the heart of a progressive education movement whose proponents include Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, John Dewey, Jerome Bruner, John Gardner, Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, and Maria Montessori.
Students educated in progressive school perform as well as students in traditional schools on all measures of learning and achievement. In addition, once they enter the world of work, they are better problem-solvers, they are more adaptable to change, and they are better work-team members than their traditionally educated peers.
One of the reasons that the United States maintains an edge in technical inventiveness and general creativity is that progressive approaches have been a significant part of American education since the early 1900's. That the U.S. has begun to lose ground in the inventive/creative realm is attributable to a resurgence of strictly traditional approaches under the guise of efficiency and accountability.
The educational and social science literature explicitly validates many aspects of progressive education; other aspects are supported anecdotally. Progressive education provides teachers and students multiple pathways toward meeting real-world educational standards.
What impedes progressive education in the Twenty-First Century?
The current political climate seeks simplistic and inexpensive solutions to the problems of education in America, specifically, over-emphasis on testing for specific content standards that results in so-called ability grouping or tracking of students. A politics-imbued educational philosophy that attempts to take the teacher-learner relationship out of the education equation. Many families have sought to escape the problems of public education by sending their children to private schools or by home-schooling them. Parents expect their children to live better – meaning materially more successfully -- than they, themselves, have lived. For example, they expect their children to attend prestigious colleges, to score well on standardized tests, and to secure high paying jobs. These expectations can yield an emphasis on material wealth over ethical character and lead to a sense of entitlement among students, especially those in the higher socio-economic strata of society. Parents place too early and too much emphasis on learning ultra-specific skills such as ballet, sports, and foreign languages – the so-called hurried child syndrome.
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