There was a lot of information presented here and I found quite a bit of it to be interesting and it raised many questions in my mind.
First, one of the things that I found to be interesting is that there is a difference between collaboration and cooperation. I feel that these two terms are often used so interchangeably when actually it seems that collaboration is a philosophy of practices that play into the actual act of cooperation.
Then the other thing that I found to be quite interesting and raise so many questions was module 37 on differentiated instruction. I believe that this is a really good thing as it helps the students who may struggle more to get the extra help that they need while also allowing the teacher to challenge some of the students who may have already had the material previously or just understood it more quickly. However, this seems like it would be a lot of work which is probably one of the reasons that more teachers do not do it. Then there is the fact that a teacher must be very careful when grouping students because they do not want to segregate students by socio-economic status or any other factors. However, it is hard to group students if some understand the ideas while others don't because it is quite likely that the ones who already understand will do all the work and those who don't understand will still not get the help they need in understanding.
Furthermore, in that module it talked about the Pygmalion Effect as well as self-fulfilling prophecies and sustaining expectation effects. I think that it is important for teachers to expect the very best from their students and hold them all to high standards, believing that they can achieve whatever they put their minds too. However, when you see their families, or here comments from other teachers I am sure it is hard not to formulate negative judgments about the abilities of a students and what you feel they are likely to achieve or not.
I really liked the section in the book that talked about self-fulfilling prophecy. I felt like I could relate to this from my childhood! I wrote the following on my older brother's facebook wall!!:
ReplyDelete"Hey so I thought you might like this. In my Educational Psychology class, I just read about the "self-fulfilling prophecy". This is where the teacher has a belief about the student that has no basis in fact. For example, a child looks dirty so the teacher automatically judges the child and thinks they aren't as smart and then has lower expectations for the child. The book claims that the student's behavior then conforms to the teacher's expectations - whether higher or lower.
I thought of you when I read this. Take it how you want...lol. I just always remember you telling mom, "Well if you keep thinking that, then that's what I'm going to do!" Here is your foundation for an argument about that. You're welcome! :)
I know, I'm a great sister. Anyway, that aside, it's interesting how teachers do it and so do parents. I had thought of this being done, but did not know that it was actually something that had a theory and is real. My mom would always tell my older brother that he was having an attitude. He didn't think so, but he would tell my mom if she was going to think that anyway, then he was going to have an attitude. This was him saying that he was going to follow the self-fulfilling prophesy without even knowing what it was.