Child maltreatment response

Child maltreatment—whether it be through abuse or neglect, is something I am concerned with as a future educator. I know I am obligated to report abuse where I find it, but what I’m worried about is: how will I make that call?

For one thing, I understand that I must take anything a child says to me as at true. I have no real problem accepting this, although when the time comes I fear it will be an anxiety-inducing process.

But what about when the child doesn’t say anything, and it is up to me to look for the signs? What counts as neglect, versus just having parents that are in poverty? Both may result in children going hungry sometimes or not having the proper clothes. I want to make the best choices to protect children, but also to protect the integrity of families who may be facing challenges I can’t imagine. The gravity of this responsibility is not lost on me, but honestly I’m not sure how exactly to deal with it. How much can I help? How much can a poor decision on my part end up hurting a family?

Then, what about children who are abused in ways that don’t leave a mark? This whole aspect of being not only a teacher, but a caregiver in some ways, for my future class just reemphasizes for me the importance of being in touch with the students. I’ll have to attune myself to them so I can notice when things are off. 

Sociocognitive conflict response

One concept I think has a lot of application for my future elementary classroom is that of “sociocognitive conflict,” defined as interactions with age-mates that involve wrestling with contradictory viewpoints. Piaget and Vygotsky, my two favorite characters, both saw the importance of peer interaction in learning and development.

What does this mean for me as a teacher?

I need to give students opportunity to interact with each other, not relying on a routine of whole-group instruction and independent practice. I need to give students different opportunities and contexts (in the whole group, in small groups, just with a partner) to work together and sometimes just to discuss.  Considering my age group, I will probably want to include some explicit instruction for them on how to disagree respectfully, take turns speaking, and contribute to a discussion without talking over one another. Beyond building their understanding of whatever topic they are focusing on, this also gives them social skills that will be useful to them in their maturation in academic and non-academic contexts.

Another thing I must be mindful of in order to promote sociocognitive conflict and give students that learning experience is how much time I give students to be wrong. As a teacher, it will be important for me to overcome my natural instinct to immediately correct misconceptions. I should first let students rely on other students. Again, this may be something I need to explicitly teach depending on my students’ prior experiences in the classroom. I’ll need to learn for myself at what point my intervention is necessary.

Complex cognitive processes response

What seemed most crucial to me about this chapter was the role of the instructor in explicitly tying things into a bigger picture, and heading off misconceptions. This has been a theme in the last few lessons, but specifics from a cognitive perspective were given here. I was thinking about the author’s description of formal discipline, and how my study of Latin did help me, and what might be different about the way I was instructed versus the way that Greek and Latin may have been taught during the Enlightenment as well as to the author. During my study, it was always emphasized how Latin was connected linguistically with the etymologies of English words as well as those in Romance languages. It was always explicitly taught that the rules for grammar and literary devices we studied were connected to those we needed to know in English class. Because of that, I really did make those connections. I don’t think Latin was useful just as an intellectual exercise, but because of the Latin-influenced world I inhabit. On the other hand, I wonder, if the mind-as-muscle theory is totally bunk, why is it always recommended for the elderly to work on puzzles and things to prevent dementia? Is there some kind of specific content area that provides a better “intellectual workout” than others, for that population? I think that what it means is that Latin isn’t better than studying Japanese, and woodworking isn’t more stimulating than pottery, et cetera, which makes sense. But for the few kinds of things that are applicable with general transfer, what best hones those skills? The other thing that I was thinking about was, what kinds of misconceptions/examples of negative transfer have I had that I’ve just never been called out on? Like what kind of situations have I been approaching completely the wrong way because of some similar situation I remember?

Constructivism

So far out of all the theories, I think I like constructivism the best. It makes the most sense to me, and I think it combines the most important and relevant factors from each of the preceding theories.

Something I think it touches on that the other theories miss out on, although the cognitive approach touches on it, is how where exactly a student’s misunderstandings are coming from. I think constructivism offers an explanation for why peer tutoring and cooperative learning can be so powerful in a classroom, beyond the idea of creating a warm and welcoming classroom environment; students can find and correct gaps in their learning or bizarre assumptions that may have gone unchecked during the process of explaining themselves to another student.

I think aside from the social aspect of constructivism, the individual aspect gives credence to a lot of the same things as the social-cognitive model did (under the umbrella of “prior knowledge”) and challenges teachers to meet students at their level and make informal assessments all the time.

One of the things I like best about constructivism is the idea of scaffolding—how with a person more skilled than you helping you out, you can achieve things you never could on your own. We talked about scaffolding a lot in my elementary education class, and it was really amazing to experience it at work as well as think of ways to use it. One of the main focuses is giving students a taste of success with real, challenging material, and how that success will motivate them. This makes me favor constructivist theory even over social-cognitive, which was my next favorite.

Cognitive processes response

a) What are the essential skills and/or learning outcomes you want your students to know and

be able to do that relate to cognitive learning?

Cognitive skills I want my students to have (elementary-level):

·         Relate information to what they already know

·         How to organize information in a way that makes sense

·         How to visualize something in a way that helps you remember it

·         Have a variety of mnemonic techniques available to use (songs, images, keywords)

These skills will help students make more meaningful connections to the material, increasing the likelihood that they will remember what they learn. The most important one, to me, is being able to make connections to what they already know. I have noticed that elementary students can sometimes very easily memorize something or perform a task without seeing the significance of it. It is important to me to activate their background knowledge on topics, not only to draw their interest, but to deepen their understanding of material. This comes to mind especially when thinking about reading. If students are prepped to make connections and think about a topic before approaching a text, they are more likely to understand it.  What I also think is crucial is teaching kids that all these things are skills that can be learned, not just an innate process. I think that would help increase their motivation and self-efficacy, especially if we tracked progress. I’m not sure a purely cognitive view is one I want to adopt, but there are a lot of practically useful things included in the approach.

ELL/immigration response

Teaching ELL students is an increasingly important skill, as the demographics in the country change.
One of the barriers to accommodating for ELL/immigrant children is a bias against them culturally and politically from teachers and community members. Bias against immigrants and a movement toward “English-only” makes school an unwelcoming environment for many learners.

One problem teachers as a group face when dealing with culturally and linguistically diverse students is that teachers tend to be majority white, middle-class women. And unfortunately a lot of teachers don’t feel comfortable with students that have different backgrounds, or, at least, they feel most comfortable with students that are similar to them. As we talked about with gender, this can put boys at a disadvantage in school. For ELL students the implication then is kind of obvious.

Studies have shown that ELL students can do really well in a bilingual setting, but you’ll find in many states that there are actually laws saying that all instruction must be in English (looking at you, Arizona). I feel like the idea of English-only is so antiquated and jingoistic; I’m so concerned that these attitudes seem to be growing. The wave of immigration is increasing. Already in five states the majority of K-12 students are from “minority” backgrounds. If we continue to politicize the education of those students, it’s not just going to have a negative impact on their individual education; it’s going to be negative for the country as a whole. I feel like in a K-12 setting it’s necessary for teachers to be advocates of social justice. There are a lot of reasonable barriers teachers might have in providing the best education to all students, but their politics or biases shouldn’t be among those.

Behaviorism and social-cognitive response

How would you define successful mastery of your lesson objectives from a behavioral view of learning? From a social cognitive view of learning?

From a behaviorist perspective, when learning takes place, you can see a change in behavior.

So, in the classroom, this would be like, after a lesson, students perform a task that they previously could not. A pre-test given before the lesson would have students give incorrect answers, whereas a post test would have them answer correctly. This change in behavior (answering correctly instead of incorrectly) would be the evidence of learning. Or, another example, say you have a dance lesson. Before the lesson, the students would not know the steps to the foxtrot. After the lesson, having students perform the foxtrot would be evidence of their learning.

From a social-cognitive view of learning, a change in behavior may or may not take place. From a social-cognitive perspective, learning is an internal mental process that may or may not be reflected in behavior.

The social-cognitive theory is different from the behaviorist theory, because in the social-cognitive theory, you don’t need to learn everything by doing it yourself; you can learn by observation. Therefore, the learning might take place in your mind, without being reflected in your performance. This makes defining and assessing learning objectives more difficult. The focus, then, in a social-cognitive classroom, is creating an environment where students are likely to have good models and high self-efficacy.

Creating a productive learning environment response

As a prospective teacher, I worry about classroom management and am a little daunted about being the only adult in a room full of kids, and being legally responsible for them. Some things I will definitely try in my own classroom are: having kids participate in making the classroom rules and giving them some amount of choice in their activities. Not only does this “feel right” but it is good to know it is research-supported. I guess I kind of hope to create a self-sustaining classroom, one where students are involved somehow in the maintenance of order (and therefore one where hopefully it doesn’t all fall apart if they have a sub one day).

One thing that really resonated with me was the idea that creating a warm learning environment didn’t just mean giving students affection—that treating them with respect also meant taking your role as teacher and adult seriously. When I reflect on my experiences as an elementary student, the best teachers were compassionate and treated me like a person, but moreover, they were prepared, worked to create engaging material, and set high standards for our class. I never had an elementary teacher who was mean—I think as more jobs are open to women in general, less people go into this profession who don’t enjoy being around children than maybe did before, so everyone is pretty sweet and nice. But what makes a teacher stand out of that pack is taking the job itself really seriously.

I recently visited a classroom, which, while not being exactly how I envision mine, was absolutely impressive in its organization and rigor—and these were first-graders! But they all knew exactly what they should be doing, and, without generally falling into the trap of tattle-tales, they monitored each other even when the teacher was working elsewhere.

One of my favorite ideas from the readings was having a two-way journal with students, where the teacher doesn’t correct their mistakes. Not only does this provide a way for teachers to foster closer relationships with students, giving an opportunity to interact with them personally that may be rarer in a busy classroom, but also give insight into student interests that can be used to make activities more enjoyable, and give a teacher a look into a student’s writing level. Plus! Writing without criticism can make a student feel more comfortable doing it, and they may begin to appreciate how writing for communication can be valuable and even pleasant.

CSEL: Elementary Education case study response
First, with this student, you may want to try reiterating and defining specifically what behavior is acceptable in the classroom. Then, try to take them aside at some point to talk with them one-on-one. It may also be beneficial to explicitly teach the social skills that cooperative learning requires. Finally, you could use a behaviorist approach to reward compliant behavior and punish noncompliant behavior.

Sir Ken Robinson response

I’ve never really had a bad experience with high-stakes testing as a student; it never seemed to make me or my classmates too nervous, but my teachers would certainly be. The school would always emphasize making sure you got a good night’s sleep and a good breakfast. I think the stressful thing about it for me as a student was just the weird, icy feeling that the classroom had that seemed so out of the ordinary, the proctors being hawkeyed and walking around like we were criminals.
My viewpoint on high-stakes testing has become somewhat more extreme since I’ve decided to become a teacher myself. What was before just a weird few days of school is now going to be my end-all, be-all show of my worth as an educator, and considering that I’m looking to teach at traditionally under-performing schools, I’m not comfortable with it at all. Now I can see why my teachers were nervous (and all my elementary experience was before NCLB, so I imagine it’s much more stressful now).
       Teachers drill students on what they think is in the test, what they imagine the children will fail at, etc. In general, there is a big emphasis on the fundamentals of basic skills and little emphasis on higher-order thinking (examples of which may be impractical to have in a multiple choice test, generally). When I think about the kind of classroom I want to have when I go to teach elementary school, I don’t picture the whole thing like “get everyone up to minimum standards”, I want to help kids and feed their natural curiosities about things and stretch their thinking and give them opportunities to show their talents. Of course the fundamentals are important. I am not arguing against literacy or math at all. But I think it’s a huge misjudgment of learning to say you can’t think about bigger things before you master the basics.
            I think the idea of standardized testing should be shifted to be merely an assessment of how students performed on the test. By making it the goal, and by having so many incentives and punishments based on the results, it loses its validity as a measure of genuine growth and becomes its own curriculum (albeit a vaguely-defined one). I think in lieu of high-stakes testing (at the elementary levels), we should have a meeting with the instructor and their administrator about student progress, and a discussion about whether they should continue to the next grade level. I am not opposed to standards or anything, but I feel like people at the school would be able to best assess based on their long-range interactions with students what their progress is. I feel like, in secondary school, high-stakes testing has less of a negative impact because students can handle it better and understand long-term goals more, but again, the way they are used can be criminal to struggling schools. I don’t have any illusion that my method will happen. But isn’t that the way it used to be done? With tests merely providing an occasional look at how the country was doing, and teachers having the discretion over their students’ progress? I don’t know, but I also don’t know if there’s anything I can actually do about it.

Motivation and Affect response

The theories of motivation I find most helpful are the cognitive and sociocultural theories, because I feel that many of the things outlined in these theories as being causes of motivations are things a teacher has some control over.

From the perspective of the cognitive theory, students are more intrinsically motivated when they feel like they have control and choice in what they do (self-determination). For a teacher, this means that giving students some choice in how they approach an assignment or what the topic could be will raise their motivation and engagement in a task. This may require a bit more planning on the front end for teachers, but things could still be assessed similarly. This could be as simple as, in a unit on biography, having students choose a person to study. At the same time, giving students choices like this will tell a teacher more about a student’s interests and strengths, which will also help with motivation if the teacher keeps them in mind for future planning.

The sociocultural theory is about creating a classroom environment that values learning so that, within that context, students will seek out learning experiences, and hopefully over time, internalize the value of learning, even if only in an academic context. Creating a classroom culture is probably a lot easier for an elementary school teacher than a secondary school teacher, but luckily, I will be an elementary school teacher, so I will have a lot of influence over the school experience of a relatively small number of students. Creating the desired culture in the classroom will happen in a lot of ways, from the way seating is structured, to the kinds of assignments given, to the kind of things that are seen as deserving of praise — for instance, asking good questions rather than just having the right answers. It will have to be a conscious effort at first, but I hope that eventually I will become attuned to what works in promoting my values (and I mean that in the least brainwashing way possible). 

Summarizing Students' Achievement and Abilities response

High-stakes testing and its impact on studentsA lot of the reading in this section seemed to indicate that using standardized testing as a singular assessment
is really dangerous, for a lot of reasons. Mainly being: that one grade on one test is basically useless without
context; that the assessment needs to cover relevant material in a relevant way; that only students in intermediate elementary grades are really going to be giving their best efforts. The increasing emphasis on high-stakes testing has a big impact on the daily classroom environment, too--this is talked about at the end of the chapter. The biggest thing, for me, is how it affects the curriculum (which obviously affects both teacher and student engagement and motivtion). This is really toxic in an elementary classroom (coincidentally my area of particular interest).The assessments have become less measures of expected learning and more goals in and of themselves, if that makes sense. And that’s a problem. For instance, the Common Core standards only address language arts and math. In some elementary schools now, these are the only subjects addressed. Phonics drills as far as the eye can see. Kids need to have their curiosity sparked and their creativity given room to grow, but it’s just not happening as much as it should in some stressed-out classrooms. Teachers are told to focus on the kids “in the yellow” to bring them to the minimum of what is acceptable, and so the kids falling too far in either direction are left to the wayside. There is so much emphasis on differentiation in teaching methodology, but when the goal moves from being “get the kids to learn as much as each of them can” to “make sure everyone can meet the minimum standard (which is increasingly high)”, differentiation can fall by the wayside, and a lot of the development and learning that needs to happen in elementary school that isn’t purely skills-based (for instance, general knowledge, social aspects, and critical thinking) is sidelined. Proponents of this high-stakes stuff seem to forget that learning arithmetic and reading was already a pretty big focus of primary school, and they seem to ignore the fact that being punitive about who does and does not meet the standards is not super helpful.

Classroom Assessment Strategies response

Norm-referenced vs. Criterion-referenced assessment
Norm-referenced and criterion-referenced assessment have their own pros and cons, but one potential mistake would be to think this decision is only made when it comes time to grade. Based on the text, it seems that the content of the assessments should differ in meaningful ways. For criterion-based assessment, the questions should cover the basics of the topic at hand: things every student is expected to know. With norm-referenced assessment, the instructor should be including items they don’t expect every student to know. Norm-referenced assessment, then, seems to be a little more involved than simply grading on a curve after the fact— a classroom’s full range of ability should be represented in the results. Thus, norm-referenced is probably not the best kind of assessment to use for grades. I think it is fairer, where earning credit is concerned, that an instructor’s expectations be clear ahead of time. Still, norm-referenced assessment has its place, and it can be a great tool for understanding students’ width and breadth of knowledge. Criterion-referenced assessment, while it should be able to show mastery and show gaps in areas of knowledge, has its downsides, too. First, it holds everyone to the same standards, which may not seem fair in a classroom of mixed-aptitude students. Secondly, how useful it is as a valid assessment depends very much on *which* criteria are being tested on. It should avoid focusing on trivial things. Neither type seems to be better or worse than the other, just suited towards different goals.

Student accountabilityI wonder about the role of student accountability when it comes to outcomes. Certainly, there are times when the assessment is bad or the instruction is insufficient, but something still sits wrong with me about this. The idea that if someone fails, it is always because the teacher isn’t teaching hard enough is one that seems to put an unfair amount of the responsibility for success on the teacher. I’m not sure *why* I’m uncomfortable with it, necessarily, because it’s obviously a lot of times completely the case— where a teacher needs to adapt methods, or tap into a student’s motivation. But it also seems really intimidating, as a prospective teacher.

Grading without bias
The call to grade each assessment without being biased based on a student’s previous efforts, or by your own emotions, really resonated with me. I feel like my little brother was kind of caught in this when he was in school. He was kind of all over the place for a while, but when he tried to turn things around and make genuine, concentrated efforts, his teachers still seemed to never fully trust or support him. It was like they were always looking for a way to catch him slipping up, to prove that it had been for nothing. Obviously I’m a little biased here too, but I think it’s important to, in general, take a student in good faith. But how can you balance that with using what you learn about your students over time?   I feel like so many of the problems I think about in ideology/methodology come down to: how do you balance your ideals and best practices with a bit of common-sense cynicism?