[Its.an.education.project] Questions for education projects. The life cycle of a great education.
info at olpc-peru.info
info at olpc-peru.info
Sat May 3 08:37:10 CEST 2008
PISA test... some kind of test (prepared by one of the top peruvian
universities) was given to 183,118 teachers in Peruvian public schools.
Just 151 got a "B" grade and just 8,442 got a "C" grade. The rest
fail. It was on March 2008 (this year).
http://www.elcomercio.com.pe/ediciononline/html/2008-03-15/solo-151-maestros-aprobaron-14-mas-examen-concurso-publico-nacional.html
The next things has happen this year: (real happenings! not a novel!)
a) The Minister of Education say only the ones that got best notes in
University will be hired this year.
b) Later it changes to "just the ones that approve the exam"... well
with just 8,000 approved it was impossible... there are 180,000 places
to fill with teachers!
c) Most of those teachers are formed in Colleges and Universities that
are under the supervision of the Minister of Education. Those teachers
got training and skills supervised by the Minister of Education during 5
years. Now the Minister of Education says that they are not competent
and they are not able to develop his or her profession as teachers.
Some public source said that the "bad teachers" can go to teach to
private schools. Crazy thing.
so... Education is related to WHO teach to WHO. Is Education different
in our under developed (and conflicted) countries? I think so. So what
is good for children on the north hemisphere could not be correct in the
southern hemisphere.
Best regards,
Javier Rodriguez
Lima, Peru
Bill Kerr wrote:
> Good questions, SJ
>
> I think there also needs to be something in there about different
> learners being different or that learning styles that work for one
> learner may not work for another. Perhaps those who learn readily
> without formal instruction are just one subset of all learners. For
> those people school may well feel like a prison or a sophisticated
> form of child abuse. Other learners may need far more structure than
> is fashionable to admit in constructionist study groups. There
> actually appears to be evidence for this.
>
> However, Wheldall is concerned that low-progress readers do not learn
> to read naturally. "They will only learn to read with careful,
> systematic instruction to which phonics instruction is central," he says.
>
> "The top 25 per cent of students will learn to read with little
> instruction, and for these students the 'whole language' approach will
> work well. The middle 50 per cent will learn to read if they get some
> reasonable instruction, while the remaining 25 per cent of
> low-progress readers will fail to learn to read if they do not have
> systematic instruction using phonics," he adds.
>
> Wheldall explains that after decades of scientific research we now
> know how reading works.
>
> "We know that children who struggle to learn to read find it difficult
> to break words down into their component sounds," he says. "There
> appears to be a phonological ability that some people have in
> abundance, while others struggle - it is just the way we are. There is
> clear evidence that those who struggle to break words into their
> component sounds will have difficulty learning to read. It is the way
> the brain works."
>
> - http://www.aces.mq.edu.au/musec_news.aspx?id=47
>
> Other important issues:
>
> * Impact of social class / disadvantaged background on learning
> (what is the answer for third generation unemployed - there are
> a whole bunch of hard to solve problems in the disadvantaged
> areas of wealthy countries - these houses often have a surplus
> of passive media, eg.TV in every room)
>
> * Are better qualified teachers the answer irrespective of
> technology. eg. Finland is top of PISA tests and requires
> masters degrees for their teachers
>
>
> Jaime Escalante succeeded brilliantly with low tech instructionist
> methods in disadvantaged areas of the USA (watch the movie - Stand and
> Deliver or look him up on wikipedia)
>
> If I am casting the net too wide with these questions then they still
> might serve a useful purpose of how the net should be cast, what
> should be in and out and why.
>
> Much of this is a war zone but OLPC was prepared to fight some sort of
> war from the start. Which war(s) are we prepared to fight and which
> ones not?
>
>
> On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 12:54 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com
> <mailto:meta.sj at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> What does a great education look like? Is it something
> attainable, with depth and scope? Is it an unending cycle of
> empowerment and self-discovery?
>
> What are examples of educational concepts carried out to great
> success?
>
> What are good things for learning alone; and what are good things
> to learn socially?
>
> What are ways for a community of hundreds to learn together over
> the course of a generation?
> What are good things for learning this way? What are good bodies
> of knowledge to create this way?
>
> Some have suggested that [books] can be a boon to learning, that
> children and apprentices learn better with them, even when they
> are working with a teacher or master. Others say the same about
> [dynabooks] and [the information superhighway].
> What are canonical illustrations or studies of the effects of
> these (tools|environments)?
> What are their advantages and disadvantages?
> How fundamental are each to different stages of learning?
>
> SJ
>
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