Work & Academics

Critical Issues in Education

Maggie Stehr’s article Carson going to multiage classrooms allows us to revisit the idea of multiage classrooms in the educational setting today¹. The idea of multiage classrooms brings many different images to the mind for different individuals and different groups of people. Although brief, Stehr’s article raises some of the conflicting views associated with this old, yet controversial, educational reform practice. While decisions regarding multiage classrooms affect everyone within a school district, the group focused on in Stehr’s article—the group offering the most resistance to the reform—is the parent group at Roosevelt Public Elementary School. Many parents, quite rightfully, question whether using a multiage classroom approach will result in lowered educational opportunities for their children, especially if their children are older. Parents also question whether teachers will be able to adequately address educational standards—a factor increasingly important when considering the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act.

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1. Multiage classrooms date back to the “one-room schoolhouses” that served rural America from the mid-17th century. At the time, because of significantly lower enrollment levels, they were very well suited for the educational needs of the participants. As the population expanded, so too did schools, leading to an easier division of grades based on a student’s age. This allowed for at lease two significant things: (1) curriculum could be standardized, and (2) teachers could specialize according to a single age group. One flaw with this argument, however, is that homogeneity within groups is always difficult to achieve; even within a group where students are only one year apart, they will already be at different levels of proficiency (Pardini, 2005). [back]

Critical Issues in Education

The 2006 proposed budget, as with the proposed budgets of the past few years, includes recommendations to eliminate funding for certain high school after-school programs. Upward Bound, which turned 40 last year, is one of those programs proposed for elimination. We have offered Upward Bound to our students for many years, so our school district needs to closely consider the implications that these budget recommendations have for our school. With many of our students still being potential first generation college graduates, it is important that we, as educators, voice our concerns about the negative impact of the elimination of these programs.

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Lifespan Development and Learning

In comparing different learning theories in detail, one ultimately gets to the point that they realize that no one theory is right or wrong, but that each theory has something to offer. Learning theories are valuable because they are often revised and reanalyzed or tested in different contexts to see how well they stand up, effectively minimizing the need for teachers to spend too much time developing research projects and testing them for accuracy. Instead, teachers are given the opportunity to test the results of theories they find interesting or solidly designed and see how well each theory works as a predictor of outcomes. This testing of theories is important for at least two main reasons: (1) theories are often developed in a very controlled environment where the limited variables used do not always accurately reflect the “real world” and (2) depending on how old the theory is, it may be out of date and not applicable to many of the problems we encounter in schools today. Thus, even if we do not fully agree with the implications of a particular theory, it may be helpful to periodically review them and carefully consider their messages about human learning and behavior.

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Lifespan Development and Learning

From a very early point in the history of philosophy, philosophers have been asking questions about human nature and about how we develop. These questions have led to a range of theories about human development and have extended from the philosophical sphere into the realms of psychology and educational research. Along with this expansion into other areas of studies, the questions being asked are also changing. Earlier educational and psychological theories, for example, focused largely on behaviorism as the source of human development while recent theories have increasingly been integrating the role of cognition in the development process. Despite being only theories with flaws and without definite answers, these theories are very valuable to educators.

There are three main categories of thought distinguishing these educational theories: developmental, environmental, and crossover. While there is variation in the ideas of theorists within each group, there are a few generalizations that can be made about each. The following paragraphs will give some very basic background into each theory to help illustrate the differences between them.

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Lifespan Development and Learning

Ananda Mahto | Patreca Pamela Hawkins

In the education field, teachers often spend as much time engaged in classroom management as they do teaching. Additionally, it seems that teachers are being held increasingly responsible for teaching proper behavior. Because of this, it is important for educators to have an awareness and understanding of some of the theories regarding human development, especially those that are concerned with behavior management or behavior modification. This paper will look at the classical conditioning and operant conditioning behaviorist theories and present some hypothetical classroom scenarios illustrating how these concepts can be used to improve the learning environment.

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Lifespan Development and Learning

In the education and parenting fields, there is often a debate whether to use punishments or rewards to motivate students and influence behavior. There are supporters of both methods and there are people who believe that neither punishments nor rewards should be used to encourage learning. As each individual holds his or her own beliefs about the appropriate use of these tools in learning, it is important to spend some time considering the debate.

As a child in Trinidad, I remember that fear of punishment in school was a great motivator for my good behavior and desire to perform better academically. I also remember, however, that not everyone else in my school had the same response to punishment. My friend, for example, seemed to love getting in trouble and often went home with welts from the bamboo cane. What irked my teachers even more was that he was also one of the top students in the class. For me, the threat of punishment was a form of aversive stimuli and was enough to cause me to behave a certain learned accepted way.

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Lifespan Development and Learning

Individualism comes in many forms. In addition to looking different from each other, our minds and our methods of learning are also different. The education we receive in school, however, is usually quite standardized. Reflecting on my academic experience, while all my teachers had somewhat different approaches to how they presented their educational materials, many of them typically used an approach that required strong auditory learning skills. As I entered the world of education as a teacher, I became aware of different learning styles in my students—blends of kinesthetic, visual, and auditory learners—and did my best to design lessons encouraging students to engage all learning styles. I did this because when talking to other teachers about their personal educational experiences, many of them raised the point that despite having had good teachers, they wished that their education had been more visual or more hands-on. Upon further reflection of my personal situation, I would say that my educational achievements were indeed partly attributed to having had good teachers, and also partly to having grown up in a very well rounded caring environment. After all, our process of learning doesn’t start and end in school, does it?

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Introduction to Action Research

Analyzing the success of educational programs is often tricky. There is often a mix of quantitative data that can be analyzed, often in the form of standardized test scores or report cards, as well as qualitative data such as feedback from parents, teachers, students or social-workers. Furthermore, especially in cases where the student or teacher population is culturally diverse, everyone has their own opinions about what is necessary for an effective classroom. Accurate analysis of why some schools appear to be more effective can be difficult due to the number of extraneous variables-including family size, income, race, or native language-which may have an impact on how well students learn.

In 2001, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 was renamed No Child Left Behind (NCLB). One key component of the 1965 ESEA was the provision of quality educational assistance to low-income families to help break the cycle of poverty (Schugurensky 2002). The passing of the ESEA led to the creation of preschool programs such as Head Start to help reduce the already present achievement gap between the poor and more affluent families. NCLB, in turn, proposed several additional methods to reduce the achievement gap including increased accountability, revised standards of teacher qualifications, and higher educational standards.

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