The anarchic experimental schools of the 1970s
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This approach can be made to work for high-performing students, and low-performing students. Master the material in a course in half the traditional time? Earn your credit then. Need another month to master the material? Take that time, and earn your credit when you're competent in the material.
Most of us know the adage that "work expands to fill the time we are given to accomplish it". This is perhaps nowhere more true than in school. Take the time component out of learning assessment, and let people progress at their own pace. Most students are capable of working much more efficiently than they do, but there's no incentive to do so. In fact, there's a disincentive for most people; if you finish early, the teacher will probably just give you more work. Some good teachers motivate strong students to finish early so they can move on to more interesting work; I've heard far more stories of teachers who respond to early completion by just offering more of the same work.
If you're curious about this, a good place to start reading is on the Competency Works site:
http://www.competencyworks.org/resources/recommended-reading...
Sorry to not give a more complete answer at the moment.
Gamification has never done any good for academia. The ones motivated by such things don't learn anyway, and the truly excellent students would have been just as good without them.
I'm not saying I have a better system on hold, just that a lot of energy is spent on doing obvious and wrong things.
Credit can be a meaningful way to track an individual's learning, but earning credit should be more closely tied to what you've learned than how much time you've sat in a class.
The book he's best known for is http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/541132.Punished_by_Reward...
This whole approach relies on testing of some kind that can reliably measure competency in a subject area that also needs to be well-defined.
If we had that -- if the material that all students should learn could actually be built into the "correct" curriculum, and tests could be made that would measure if the student had mastered each level -- then that would be great.
Students could learn in class, or sensibly test out of entire grades at a time. Teachers could be paid (or fired) based on how well their students mastered the curriculum, and school's funding could be dependent on their students hitting certain percentages.
Unfortunately that underlying foundation isn't real; defining that curriculum means cutting up knowledge into odd shapes that don't match well to useful practical knowledge, or how most people learn. Being good at passing standardized tests mostly identifies students with good test-taking skills. Teachers who will be evaluated based on this sole, shitty measure at the end of the year are obliged to spend their time training students for the test, and have to cut out the field trips, explorations, experiments -- basically, all of the things that make inspiring teachers inspiring is no longer considered valuable.
Citations required, to be sure (I don't have the spare time to dig around now) -- but some of this is common sense.
If you set up a rewards system, you have to be really smart about what, exactly, you're rewarding.
The most valuable educational experiences are not generally found in drilling for a standardized test, I think; so setting up a system where that's the only thing rewarded is going to be unhelpful.
- Many courses already have a final exam well-established. Some states are starting to require that students be given the option to test out of core courses, and one option is to let them take the final. This doesn't mean take the final as many times as you want until you pass; we can set reasonable limits on offering opportunities to test out.
- Portfolio-based assessment moves beyond just using standardized tests to assess competence.
At my school, we set up independent studies frequently for students whose educational history is often checkered. These students develop a set of skills and knowledge in their course of study, and then demonstrate their understanding in a variety of ways. If you've set up the structures effectively, it's not overwhelming to individualize instruction for students who need it.
One student's story: I knew a student who passed Algebra 1 and failed French 1 in 8th grade. In 9th grade he was given Algebra 1, and he was placed in French 2. His school wouldn't switch his classes; he failed Algebra because he refused to do all the work over again for a class he had passed, and he failed French 2 because he was in over his head. We gave this student the chance to test out of some of his math credit, and placed him in otherwise appropriate classes.
When schools mess up, they often times have no idea how much that impacts individual students and their families.
The modern educational system is already pushing the idea of a reverse classroom, where lectures are on your own time, and homework and questions are done in the classroom. Desynchronizing the exact progress through the material is much simpler in this sort of environment. (Of course, it is important not to totally screw those people who rely on the structure and rigour of a formal schedule, or the cooperation of classmates; it is easy to focus too much on averages and ignore outliers).
Personally, I prefer to on binges (spend 30+ hours in a few days on a single subject, then don't touch the subject for a few weeks). However, the educational system specifically discourages this, insisting that you you have deadlines, learn extensively within specific well-defined subjects, discuss things as a team, attend each lecture, and so on. If you fail to follow this structure, you fail, if you follow, you pass. If you cram for tests at the exact right time, you even get a good evaluation. It evaluates your ability to fit the system with high accuracy, and your competence with mediocre accuracy. Removing the unnecessary part of that would have to increase the overall accuracy, right?
Why not try it for the "best" children? Those who have a real desire and ability to learn, but don't necessarily fit in in a regular school.
Provide classes, and let the child decide which to go to.
Give exams, but don't record the grade - just give it to the child so they know how they are doing.
England has about 17,000 primary schools and about 4,000,000 primary school children. (ages 4 to 11). This group would be amazing for randomised controlled studies of teaching methods. But teachers hate being told how to teach[1]; parents would not like the idea that their child is getting the placaebo teaching method[2]; and governments are not brave enough to try it.
There's much to learn from non-school based education but I doubt most of it can be applied with the financial constraints we have [in the UK].
[I'm guessing you missed some links there.]
The studies are often small sample sizes of children who are often opted-in by their parents and the teaching is done by better than average teachers with lots of support and involvement from the institution who designed the study or otherwise stands to gain from its successful outcome.
All that is generally revealed is that children whose parents are engaged in their education being taught by good teachers and that are aware they are in a 'special' group do better than average. Unsurprisingly the methods don't scale very well.
And, not to sound too cynical about it, the parents of the "best" children tend to be very involved in their children's education, and might resist an experiment.
A lot of academically minded children would have been very poorly served by those schools. People getting to university would have been the children of upper and middle class parents who had money to afford private schooling or tuition or coaching to get into good grammar schools.
Now we have small children, and they're obsessed with reading/writing, numbers, and creative play just like we were as kids -- so they're far ahead of their age group, generally -- but we've kept them out of school so far. We're trying to figure out a path for them through the available educational options, and we're strongly inclined towards more experimental approaches.
It was completely different from her educational experience before that (not unstructured, but still... much more open-minded about education, and smart about guiding students to think about their place in the world) and the experience had a huge positive effect on her life; we are in touch (and in some cases, close friends) with a startling high percentage of her classmates there, and we've met up with (and often been hosted by) UWC classmates in Austria, Netherlands, India, Australia, France, Malaysia, and various parts of the US (and probably some other places I'm forgetting at the moment...). And despite being quite a diverse group, they're generally pretty interesting people to talk to.
I didn't even know such options existed when I was in HS; and probably would have thought it wasn't for me, at that age. But looking back now, I wish I'd gone as well.
And, to be frank, much of what I learned, at least half, while attending public school I learned on my own, independent of classes. But again, I was fortunate. Fortunate to still have faith in the system. Fortunate to have gone to a very high quality high school where I actually could get a decent education and where most of the teachers and faculty put education as their top priority (this is not necessarily the norm). Fortunate to have a home life that encouraged and facilitated reading and learning, as well as acquisition of reading materials. Fortunate that I had acquired maturity ahead of most folks at that age at a time when it was critical. Fortunate that I had not fallen in with "the wrong crowd" of people and ended up dropping out of school or getting into drugs or petty crime or what-have-you.
A lot of kids, smart kids, are not as lucky as I was. And if anything the system is even worse today. Teenagers' lives are more regimented, there's more busywork, there's less trust, the academic bureaucracy is more onerous, it's harder to escape peer pressure due to the ubiquity of social media, and so on.
Also, home schooling is growing in popularity in many progressive countries, largely to cater to child-led learning.
I have great memories from a Montessori School I went to as a kid. Spent most of my childhood education there. It was a big house, each room was dedicated to a subject and students would change rooms, big shared tables and very few students per room. I also don't remember grades or at least no focus on it.
When I got to a normal school it was one big room packed with tiny individual chairs, all classes happened in that room, everything was easy, suddenly I was a "top student" and grades were a carrot to chase after. I didn't turned out exactly a Noam Chomsky but I find it funny he had this same experience while going from an alternative education to a traditional one.
I think he talks about it in this interview: http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20130326.htm
A bright kid with a decent social support system may not find a place in the schools, but will make a place forthemselves outside that system. A kid who is struggling to read at grade level, who comes from an impoverished and/or abusive social network - this kid may have two strikes against them before they show up at all, and warrants the extra effort to try and help lift themselves out of there circumstances.
Not that I necessarily endorse the approach either, but it comes from a social welfare perspective, nothing to do with raising averages. More to do with raising citizens, as it were.
My class was 70 students. Although being in Arlington meant "solidly middle class", among some notables (modestly achieved, not super-famous) from my graduating class (1999) include: Stephen Ridley, who is CEO of xipiter, the company making USB condoms which have been featured here. Fabian Bouthillette, former assistant to Gore Vidal and author of "Gore Vidal's last stand" (http://www.amazon.com/Gore-Vidals-Last-Stand-Initiation-eboo...), Adam Berninger founder of a advertisement and design firm, and Naomi Uyama, world champion swing dancer and band-leader.
Steven and Naomi got to where they were without finishing (or in Naomi's case ever going to) college, which is funny since H-B always was proud of its college matriculation rate.
5 entrepreneurs out of 70 isn't that bad, I think! (I'm 90% of the way to being "modestly achieved")
Have you seen the dog whisperer in witch Cesar Millan takes "bad"(behavior) dogs and make the good ones?
Well, with people it is the same. My mother was teacher an volunteered to help poor children in her spare time.
She made lots of bad children become "good" ones, even becoming brilliant engineers, doctors or teachers. Basically she become their mother and gave them lots of love and care(and time, lots of time).
It is personally very rewarding but also incredible extenuating.
Our family experience tells us the main reason a kid behaves bad is because she does not care.
Imagine that your parents are drugs addicts. There is no money on the house even for the basics because for a drug addict the only important thing is getting drugs. Your parents don't care about you. You know they don't love you, drugs really fuck your brain.
Imagine your mother is a whore that loves to sleep with lots of men. You have a new dad every two weeks.
Imagine you are sexually abused by your uncle, or your father comes drunk every day and hits you.
This happens a lot. The people that suffers this couldn't care less about math or the rivers in the world.
In the US they simply put this people in jail, where they learn from other prisoners and become more and more dangerous.US has the biggest(absolute and relative) incarceration rate in the world by far.
The first thing you have to do is create a "safe net" for those kids before they are interested in anything else.
-- C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 1945
I found that the students interacted with me and the project in the way I'd expect confident adults to do. They had a self-possession that I have almost never experienced in children, and rarely find in adults. A curriculum primarily centered around freedom had given them the opportunity to learn to listen to and trust their own internal narrative.
After spending a number of days working with them I was convinced that all people, children and adults, need freedom of choice in their lives. Not because of the products that come out of it, but because of the people that emerge from it.
"[A student at a grade-less school would] be a free man. He wouldnt need a lot of discipline to shape him up. In fact, if the instructors were slacking on the job he would be likely to shape them up by asking rude questions. He'd be there to learn something, would be paying to learn something and theyd better come up with it.
Motivation of this sort, once it catches hold, is a ferocious force, and in the gradeless, degreeless institution where our student would find himself, he wouldnt stop with rote engineering information."
At university, I audited several modules, and there were many that I wanted to attend, but couldn't, either due to timetabling clashes with the classes I was supposed to attend, or because the process for attending classes in disciplines entirely unrelated to my subject was prohibitive.
When the workload expected of me grew too great, I reduced my participation or dropped out of my audited classes.
With the removal of grades (and compulsory modules) entirely, I might have dropped some of my graded modules in favour of others.
Instead, we ended up sending our daughter to Macomber Center for Self-Directed Learning, also in Framingham. It was started a couple of years ago as a response to what had happened at Sudbury Valley, and has kept the active role of the adults.
[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Learn-Unleashing-Instinct-Self-Re...
Is it freedom when I inherit the values of those who teach me, making them the foundation of my (sub-conscious) thinking?
As for pedagogy, a good one can support children in thinking for themselves, with the support of teachers who no doubt think differently than the child.
Clearly better than the craven child abuse (caning) that normal school administrators believed in.
> There is really just one genuine free school left. Summerhill is a boarding school in Suffolk that inspired Ord to set up Scotland Road.
It was a fairly miserable failure. Unless your teacher was really loud it was too hard to hear lectures. It was too hard to concentrate during tests and too easy for one disruptive class to ruin six other classes. (On a minor note, most teachers really hated only having one chalkboard instead of a whole wall.) By the time I got there (twenty years after the school opened), there were temporary walls everywhere and the school had mostly switched back to a traditional layout.