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Learning theories in education
Theories of curriculum
Theories and their implications in education
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Throughout Lives of the Boundary, many stories were told on how Rose had was able to help students with their education and how others have helped him with his education. All of the stories throughout the book have its unique background. Rose claims that giving students the individual attention that they need helps them thrive to meet the goals that they have in education. The examples that best support his claim are Harold Morton, Millie, Dr. Erlandson, and David Gonzalez. One of the first stories is about Harold Morton. Harold was a fifth grader who is a little small for his age and has a constant twitching eye. In the beginning of Rose’s session with his second group, Harold would not start writing when Rose showed the group three different …show more content…
All of this leads to obsessing over disciplining and having high test scores to compete with other school around the area. In Finland, they have no standardized tests that students need to take. When people are in trouble in Finland, an approach is taken to help them and support them. This is different in America. This supports the example of Harold as none of the teachers at the school took the approach to help Harold or even to support him. Many accusations were said that Harold is the problem and not the teachers. However, as Rose took a stand for Harold and helped him as he started to give up. With the standardized testing, it puts students with similar scores in the same classes. From this, Millie was put in a remedial class which was stated as an average class. As the schools soon start to care about the results of the standardized tests, the school start to focus on math, science,and reading which leads kids to being the same. This makes school not fun and the students end up dreading on going to school. In Finland, not only do the school focus on math, science, and reading they also focus on other important studies such as the arts, humanity, and physical education. Focusing on it all gives the students the ability to become creative and be their own individual person. Ken Robinson also proves that giving students the individual attention that they need helps them thrive to meet the goals that they have in education. Ken Robinson claimed, “Education does not go on in the committee rooms of out Legislative Buildings, it happens in the classrooms and schools. And the people who do it are the teachers and the students. And if you remove that discretion it stops working” (TEDtalks 13:15). When a teacher teaches a student will learn. Taking the actions to actually
Mike Rose’s Lives on the Boundary is an Educational Autobiography. The book begins at the beginning of his life and we follow him up into his adult years. The book focuses on the “struggles and achievements of America’s educationally underprepared” .
Labaree discusses how the United State’s education is in a school syndrome, as people in America want schools to teach society’s ideals as well as let people express their individuality. These two demands are polar opposites that cannot be achieved. As the focus goes towards balancing these in hopes of improving society as a whole, the bettering of actual student learning is put on pause. Labaree talks about the beginning of education reform, in the 19th century, being the most successful in developing society; however, as education reform continued throughout time, its effectiveness wore off. He then addresses how the desire for education reform is more about improving society than it is about learning. He finishes his argument by providing possible solutions to fixing this problem, but states that fixing this problem will never happen because no one is willing to give up both demands. Overall, Labaree goes in wonderful detail explaining the problems of education reform. What made me choose this article was that he addressed the desire that people have on school systems in promoting both society normality and individuality. This correlates well with my topic in whether public school systems promote conformist ideals or individuality.
The book Lives on the Boundary, written by Mike Rose, provides great insight to what the new teaching professional may anticipate in the classroom. This book may be used to inform a teacher’s philosophy and may render the teacher more effective. Lives on the Boundary is a first person account composed of eight chapters each of which treat a different obstacle faced by Mike Rose in his years as a student and as an educator. More specifically in chapters one through five Mike Rose focuses on his own personal struggles and achievements as a student. Ultimately the aim is to highlight the underpreparedness of some of today’s learners.
He took the initiative to get acquainted with his students the way that his professors got acquainted with him. He would make house visits and spend extra time with the children whom he thought needed more assistance, especially with a child named Harold. Mike Rose read Harold’s academic file two times to investigate how other teachers evaluated Harold and their time spent with him. All of the teachers kept referring to Harold to have slow progression through school and not having much of an attention span. Rose took it upon himself to figure out how to help him and get him to open up and progress through his literary tasks. On page 114 Roses says: “… the conflict between two visions: one of individual possibility and one of environmental limits and determination” Although Rose was not directly talking about Harold in this statement, I believe that this is a great sentence to reflect on. This statement means a tremendous amount throughout this chapter. This sentence, to me, proclaims the vision on what your actual possibilities are, are greatly affected by what others foresee your possibilities can/ should be. For example, in this text we are talking about Harold. Harold isn’t a dumb child, he can read and write, maybe not well, be he is able to perform those tasks. The test show that Harold is not capable to perform the tasks to the grade level approval, so he is dropped
The ability for all children from varying walks of life to receive a well-rounded education in America has become nothing more than a myth. In excerpt “The Essentials of a Good Education”, Diane Ravitch argues the government’s fanatical obsession with data based on test scores has ruined the education system across the country (107). In their eyes, students have faded from their eyes as individual hopefully, creative and full of spirit, and have become statistics on a data sheet, percentages on a pie chart, and numbers calculated to show the intelligence they have from filling out bubbles in a booklet. In order for schools to be able to provide a liberal education, they need the proper funding, which comes from the testing.
He himself had gone through difficulties in the American educational system like the students he mentioned in his book. He talks about the struggles that he had gone through as someone who was not American. When Mike Rose was a child, he had problems with math and grammar and was not very fond of it. Then, when he was put into a remedial class because of a mix up, he experienced how the American educational system treated students in remedial classes. After they corrected the mistake, it was too late to go back and learn what he should have been learning. When he got to high school, one of his teachers, Jack MacFarland became a role model for him. MacFarland got him to be interested in reading and writing and later on even helped him get into a university. In the book, Lives on the Boundary, Rose basically writes about his experience with the American educational system. Along with his own experience are stories about the students he had come across at the University he was working at. Rose accomplishes to engage his audience into the reading by telling his own story and going back and forth between him and his students. In this short book, Rose’s writing style is more like an autobiography which reflects the theme “hope” by using his students’ and his own experiences and outcomes to say that there is hope for people who have obstacles in their way.
It’s no surprise that there are faults within our schools in today’s society. As both authors’ point out if our educational system is
She explains how standardized tests, such as the one her students took, were designed with numerous interference techniques, included questions which were above-grade material, and were administered with inadequate time to answer the questions being presented. Stahlman goes on to express her frustration with a standardized test which was administered to her students by saying "I watched in horror as my precious students, who were gifted poets and writers, inquisitive scientists and mathematicians, lovers of books, remarkable artists, and caring learners, were forced to silently attempt to master a test that was designed to trip them up." (Stahlman 242) The author also states how these standardized tests seem to be high-stakes in nature due to schools being labeled and ranked according to their scores and teachers being rewarded due to their students achievement in these tests. This article serves as one of my stronger arguments for my case compared to my other sources, due to its exemplification of how the proliferation of such tests is alarming and how the standardized testing of students at such a young age is not appropriate due to their cognitive development. The article is also useful in the sense that is provides a valid and sound argument for the opposition of standardized testing. I will be implementing this source into my argumentative essay by providing examples from Stahlman's text on how bizarre standardized testing might seem when it comes to the assessment of students, especially at such a young age. It will also serve as a good source for proving how much of a bearing standardized tests hold on the assessment of not only students but teachers as
Within the experts of Schindler's List and add At the Heart of the White Rose; Letters and Diaries of Hans Sophie Scholl, both experts demonstrate courage and the ability to be an upstanding are by standing up for the Jewish racing and defying Nazi commands. To begin with, Schindler was the ideal Aryan, to avoid military service he joined the German intelligence and traveled to Poland following the invasion. In 1939 Schindler acquired a contract for supplying kitchenware to the military and opened a manufacturing plant in cracow. He moved his shoe is labors to a remote and safe location away from enemy lines and treated them well until the war was over. The narrator states, “At his own expense he provided did his Jewish employees with the life suspicion diet, unlike the starvation-level rations mandated by the Nazis” (2).
Fire and Roses was written by Nancy Lusignan Schultz in 2002. It depicts the burning of an Ursuline Convent in Charleston, Massachusetts by a mob of citizens, including the factors leading up to it’s destruction, and it’s fallout. While it describes a plethora of characters involved in the riot, it focuses on Bishop Fenwick and the Mother Superior of the Covenant, Mary Ann Moffatt.
Alan Nadel in May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson states “August Wilson’s female characters are represented as nurturers” (6-7).This is exactly how August Wilson presents Rose to his readers. A key element is that Wilson names her after a flower just as his own mother; whose name was Daisy. It is apparent that through Rose, August Wilson wants us to see his mother. He intentionally portrays her as the caring, ideal woman, and one who stands by her man no matter how difficult this may be.
Too much time is being devoted to preparing students for standardized tests. Parents should worry about what schools are sacrificing in order to focus on raising test scores. Schools across the country are cutting back on, or even eliminating programs in the arts, recess for young children, field trips, electives for high school students, class meetings, discussions about current events, the use of literature in the elementary grades, and entire subject areas such as science (if the tests cover only language arts and math) (Kohn Standardized Testing and Its Victims 1).
Put yourself in a high school students shoes. Your main focal points are to do well in school, get good grades, learn new things, make memories, and to have fun. Though many schools place a fun and constructive learning environment over a stressful test based environment, some do not. Schools have made standardized testing their main focus instead of teaching students other equally important skills. ( ProCon. "Standardized Tests - ProCon.org.) Many schools are so focused with test scores that they change their curriculum to include a large amount of test preparation. (ProCon. "Standardized Tests - ProCon.org.) Most schools across America rely heavily on ineffective overuse of standardized testing. The test can be very helpful, but not in intense and stressful situations. (Ravitch.151) Some schools place too much responsibility and accountability on the teachers and educators. (Ravitch.154 ) Critics would argue that certain standardized tests do not meet the qualifications necessary to judge the progress of a student or a teacher. (Ravitch.152 ) Not only is testing used to evaluate a student, but also teacher achievement. (ProCon. "Standardized Tests - ProCon.org.) Holding educators accountable for test scores places an unfair amount of stress on all parties involved, as well as inducing a difficult working atmosphere. (Brill, Allie. "Standardized Testing Leads To Unnecessary Stress On Students, Teachers.") Standardized testing generally imposes harsh consequences that bring many different problems, which often lead to dishonesty and a narrow perception of education from students and educators. (Gatt, Jeneba. "Atlanta's cheating ways: S...
...the pressure of keeping up with other students. Here, they can work at their own pace and figure out a solution that best works for them to understand or solve a problem. One last idea school reform should address in creating an equality of opportunity in public schools would be to set standards and spend more time in the classroom on these important tasks. These standards are put into place to help evaluate one’s progress. It’s important to have some standards in place, but they need to be feasible. To make such standards feasible, the teacher will be able to tailor it so that the standard can be met by the student. Spending a decent amount of time to get students to reach these standards is imperative. Without a sufficient amount of time, students may not be able to grasp and fully understand what is being taught to them resulting in standards not being met.
In conclusion, in Finland,the teachers teach students with the aim of helping them learn,not pass tests.