Once I began researching more about student choice in the classroom, I realized I was not only diving into a rich educational topic, but a psychological topic as well. Providing students with more opportunities for choice in the classroom falls within the umbrella movement of student-centered learning. Student-centered learning is a way of conducting and thinking about teaching where the students are part of each step of the education process, including planning, implementing and assessing. The psychological theory that supports this way of teaching is called self-determination theory. Self-determination theory, recently expanded on by psychologists Edward L. Deci and Richard Ryan essentially states that people are willing to work harder when they feel that they are a meaningful part of what they are working for. This all falls rather neatly under Piaget's constructivism approach, which states that students must have a meaningful interaction and relationship with their own learning experience in order to be successful. So there is a huge amount of historical context leading to the student-centered teaching approach that is becoming very popular today. These days teachers and education systems all over the world are experimenting with providing students with more meaningful learning experiences. From project-based learning to flexible seating, students today are being provided with more choice than ever.
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I think something that spoke to me the most in the key elements for changing education listed by Darling-Hammond and in the rest of her book is the overall understanding that we need to recognize the disparities that exist between low and high income students. All of the key elements that Hammond list would really work towards making education in this country more equitable. Teaching low-income students it quickly becomes obvious that they need more support, not because there is anything wrong or deficient about them, but simply because they do not have nearly as many opportunities to access learning outside of school. We need to re-alocate our funds and resources towards the students who need them the most.
I also thought Darling-Hammonds focus on accountability and goals was really meaningful for myself and my own teaching. I think "teacher accountability" has been a dirty term since the rise of standardized testing, but I think we need to step back from defensiveness and really consider our objectives. My objective as a teacher is to educate my students as best I can with the time I have with them. I think the nation's education goal should be pretty similar, and we do need a way to assess teachers. Many young teachers today are struggling and without assessment there is no way to help them. But our assessment should be geared towards our objectives. If we want our students to be good test-takers then we should keep the standards-based teacher assessments we have now, but if we want our students to be intelligent, complex, and compassionate people then we need to find a way to hold teachers accountable to that objective. Overall I believe that if the key elements Darling-Hammond lists were implemented in an intelligent way, the United States would begin to see inequalities decrease and the American education system rapidly improve, especially when compared to other students. The students in Singapore and Finland are doing so well because they are taught how to think. That is what we need to be doing more of here. This study is contextualized in the ever changing landscape of education. Our current times have brought changes that are not only happening faster and with greater importance, but are impacting the futures of our students. Commonly discussed amongst educators dedicated to providing students with a 21st century education is the fact that we need to be preparing our students today for the unknown possibilities of tomorrow. According to Linda Darling-Hammond in The Flat World and Education the school system established at the dawn of the industrial revolution, which is designed to provide the knowledge needed to work in factories, is now antiquated and unable to provide students with the skills they need in order to be successful in the modern world. While other countries, such as Singapore and Finland, have made substantial changes to their education systems in order to better serve their student, the United States continues to use an old system that no longer works. According to The Nation’s Report Card students in 4th grade scored lower on national standardized tests in 2013 than they did in 1990. Students did score 4 points higher in Science in 2015 than they did in 2009, but were unfortunately still on average below proficient. Part of the reasons students are struggling is because there is a nationwide epidemic of disengagement. According the the National Center for Education Statistics in 2015 6.3% of males and 5.4% of females dropped out of high school. These figures become even more alarming when you consider that 9.9 % of males and 8.4% of females who are hispanic dropped out of high school in 2015. This variance between the national average and the performance of hispanic students is perhaps part of why California, which proudly has very high populations of hispanic students, continues to lag behind the rest of the country on standardized tests. On Math standardized tests in 2015 the national average had 19% of students testing at below basic, compared to 28% of students in California. The national average showed 39% of students as testing at proficient or above, where only 30% of Californian students tested at proficient or above. In Science the national average demonstrated that 37% of students were testing at proficient or above, and 63% of students were testing at basic or below. In California students demonstrated that 24% were proficient, while 76% had a basic or below basic understanding of grade appropriate science standards. Finally California also has higher high school dropout rates than the national average. According to the California Department of Education 11.5% of Californian students drop out of highschool, and 12.6% of hispanic or latino Californian students drop out of high school. In light of all this data I believe that California, as well as the United States needs to find a way to simultaneously re-engage the student population in school and learning, and find new strategies of teaching that better prepare our students for their futures.
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AuthorI am a fourth grade teacher in Vacaville, California. Archives
November 2017
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