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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Aaron Davis

Aaron Davis

Charles M. Garcia » Blog Archive » Cooperative Learning Tools - 0 views

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    "Cooperative Learning Tools"
Aaron Davis

Quentin Blake's handwriting typeface - 0 views

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    "Quentin Blake's handwriting typeface  MAR 09 2016 "
Aaron Davis

Shanahan on Literacy: How Many Times Should They Copy the Spelling Words? - 0 views

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    Tim Shanahan explores the connection between the act of repetition and learning new words. he provides analysis of a range of strategies, as well as exploring the research at the same time. It is true that high frequency words do not have typical spelling patterns, but it is rare that all of their elements are odd (e.g., the vowel pronunciation in "the" is a bit funky, but the /th/ is a more consistent element). Analyzing such words, rather than just repeating them again and again, is a better avenue to long-term learning than copying it over and over again
Aaron Davis

Gender and Group Work - HuntingEnglishHuntingEnglish - 0 views

  • What is the ideal number for the group size for this task? Are students clear about what effective collaboration looks like and sounds like? What are the group goals and individual goals for this task? Are they clear to the students? How are you going to fend off ‘social loafing’? Should personality differences influence our grouping decisions? Are there introverts in the classroom that should receive particular attention as we decide upon grouping students? How should we group in relation to ability or skill levels? Are the groups separate by ability or mixed, or randomised? Does this make a difference?
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    Alex Quigley explores the topic of group work. Rather than a clear answer, he provides a excellent series of reflective questions to guide things. If we accept the notion of the 'wisdom of crowds', then what is the magic number for group size? There is no fixed answer, but research evidence shows that any group size above six is unlikely to be effective. Why is this? Well, successful group work relies on group goals, but alongside individual responsibility. With too many students in a group it is too easy for social loafing (students putting in less effort when they know they can because other group members pick up the slack) to happen. Better to have a smaller groups, such as trios or fours. Of course, even then, they'll need training.
Aaron Davis

education in a Refugee Camp - 1 views

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    Natalie Scott provides an account of education in refugee camps
Aaron Davis

The perils of “Growth Mindset” education: Why we’re trying to fix our... - 0 views

  • By now, the growth mindset has approached the status of a cultural meme.
  • Regardless of their track record, kids tend to do better in the future if they believe that how well they did in the past was primarily a result of effort.But “how well they did” at what?
  • even some people who are educators would rather convince students they need to adopt a more positive attitude than address the quality of the curriculum (what the students are being taught) or the pedagogy (how they’re being taught it).
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  • An awful lot of schooling still consists of making kids cram forgettable facts into short-term memory. And the kids themselves are seldom consulted about what they’re doing, even though genuine excitement about (and proficiency at) learning rises when they’re brought into the process, invited to search for answers to their own questions and to engage in extended projects.
  • the most salient feature of a positive judgment is not that it’s positive but that it’s a judgment; i
  • the first problem with this seductively simple script change is that praising children for their effort carries problems of its own, as several studies have confirmed: It can communicate that they’re really not very capable and therefore unlikely to succeed at future tasks. (“If you’re complimenting me just for trying hard, I must really be a loser.”)
  • what’s really problematic is praise itself. It’s a verbal reward, an extrinsic inducement, and, like other rewards, is often construed by the recipient as manipulation.
  • books, articles, TED talks, and teacher-training sessions devoted to the wonders of adopting a growth mindset rarely bother to ask whether the curriculum is meaningful, whether the pedagogy is thoughtful, or whether the assessment of students’ learning is authentic (as opposed to defining success merely as higher scores on dreadful standardized tests).
  • the series of Dweck’s studies on which she still relies to support the idea of praising effort, which she conducted with Claudia Mueller in the 1990s, included no condition in which students received nonevaluative feedback. Other researchers have found that just such a response — information about how they’ve done without a judgment attached — is preferable to any sort of praise.
  • We need to attend to deeper differences: between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and between “doing to” and “working with” strategies.
  • Dweck’s work nestles comfortably in a long self-help tradition, the American can-do, just-adopt-a-positive-attitude spirit.(“I think I can, I think I can…”) The message of that tradition has always been to adjust yourself to conditions as you find them because those conditions are immutable; all you can do is decide on the spirit in which to approach them. Ironically, the more we occupy ourselves with getting kids to attribute outcomes to their own effort, the more we communicate that the conditions they face are, well, fixed.
  • It isn’t entirely coincidental that someone who is basically telling us that attitudes matter more than structures, or that persistence is a good in itself, has also bought into a conservative social critique. But why have so many educators who don’t share that sensibility endorsed a focus on mindset (or grit) whose premises and implications they’d likely find troubling on reflection?
  • the real alternative to that isn’t a different attitude about oneself; it’s a willingness to go beyond individual attitudes, to realize that no mindset is a magic elixir that can dissolve the toxicity of structural arrangements. Until those arrangements have been changed, mindset will get you only so far. And too much focus on mindset discourages us from making such changes.
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    "An awful lot of schooling still consists of making kids cram forgettable facts into short-term memory. And the kids themselves are seldom consulted about what they're doing, even though genuine excitement about (and proficiency at) learning rises when they're brought into the process, invited to search for answers to their own questions and to engage in extended projects. Outstanding classrooms and schools - with a rich documentary record of their successes - show that the quality of education itself can be improved. But books, articles, TED talks, and teacher-training sessions devoted to the wonders of adopting a growth mindset rarely bother to ask whether the curriculum is meaningful, whether the pedagogy is thoughtful, or whether the assessment of students' learning is authentic (as opposed to defining success merely as higher scores on dreadful standardized tests). "
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