Adult Teaching - Essay Example

Adult Teaching 1. The instructional model selected to demonstrate motor skills required to created a copy of a music CD is a Socratic problem solving lesson due to its supplantive nature. It is important to emphasize the subject matter in the introduction paragraph with an attention getter such as “making a musical CD.” The body of the instruction must mention all the equipment and materials needed to complete the process which includes hardware, software and music selection. Generative techniques can be used to facilitate the student’s music selection as well as stating the initial, intermediate and concluding steps that must be perform to achieve the goal. This body of the instructions must demonstrate and explain each step (supplantive techniques) which a method that provides better understanding for the learned since it provides both a set of instruction and examples of how to achieve the task which may be visual diagrams or photos. The concluding paragraph of the instruction model involves the student performing the process learned and actually making a working copy of the musical CD. The assessment involves the educator performing an evaluation to determine if the student achieve desired output which was to make copy of the CD that could be played in a CD player and determining if the principles learned could be applied by the student in similar situations. 2. Vgotsky had a unique pedagogical view on how people in their early stages of life learn things. According to Vgotsky theory children learn new things by participating in adult type activities (Stanford). His theory extends to adult learners as well and it implies that the best way for people to learn is by getting involved in collaborative activities with other learners. Jean Piaget also developed a theory on how children learn. His theory implied that children learn in completely different manners, but they go through four similar stages. The four stages are: sensorimotor (0-2 years), preoperational (2-7 years), concrete operational (7-11) and formal operational or abstract thinking (11 years and up) (Ginn). The methodology used by Piaget is a formal method that differentiates the learning stages. This method in comparison with the simplistic assumption made by Vgotsky is much more complete and utilizes the scientific method to arrive at conclusion. Both philosophers emphasize the importance of learning early in a person’s life. Vgotsky and Piaget both also attended the adult learning in their theories, with the biggest difference among the two school of thought is that Piaget has an elaborated techniques that breaks down the learning process by states, while Vgotsky simply has a general concept on how learning takes place. 3. In cases when scores of test are too low in general for the overall population of students that participated in the test an educator has the option of implementing a curve to the scores to adjust the grades based on the relative strength of a score in comparison with the over population of students that took the examination. A curve is a simple mathematical method that can be applied by using descriptive statistics. All the scores are tallied to then find the median of the scores. The median becomes a C grade. The scores in the 75th percentile is a D grade and the grades below are F grades. The 25th percentile score becomes a B, while any scores higher than the 25th percentile position are A grades. This system is fair system which rewards the people that performed better in relation to the entire group. This is done in extreme cases when the majority of the group failed if evaluated in a typical grading scale in which 90% score is an A grade. If some particular questions within the examination were the root of the problem the educator has other options as well such as the “difficulty test.” This method can be applied by choosing the highest grade in the exam taker population. The amount of points the best student was not able to attain in comparison with a perfect score is the difficulty metric which is adjusted by subtracting the total by one. For example if the best score was a 77 of 100 the score of the student is raised by 22 points (23-1) for a 99% total. The rest of the population receives the 22 points added benefit as well. 4. A competency refers to a person’s demonstrated knowledge, skills and abilities (Aguinis & Kraiger, 2006). The educational process requires teachers and professors to evaluate the performance of their students at interval periods of time during the allocated span the course takes place which may be a month, a trimester, a semester or a year. The evaluation of the academic progress of the students is mandatory to know if the receptors of knowledge are learning what they are suppose to. Traditional systems such as examination with multiple choices are not a true measurement of the acquisition of knowledge, that is why competency based systems were developed. The competency evaluation approach links the educational experience with assessment, instruction and application. Since it emphasis in the application of the knowledge and skills learned it is able to determine if the student has an understanding on how a particular piece of knowledge can help them in real life application in the workplace or in any professional setting. Despite all the advantages associated with competency based systems its implementation it at times very hard, expensive and time consuming which is the reason why many educators choose contract-based evaluation systems over competency-based evaluation systems. The educator designing an evaluation method is also looking for simplicity and objective two characteristics which contract based evaluation possess which competency-based evaluation do not since they are a subjective and complex method. Uniformity and consistency are provided by contract-based systems and a universal grading scale (A-F) can be used since all students are judged on the exact same criteria. Contract based examination utilized methodology such as multiple choice questions, true or false or essay question which facilitates the validation of the results. References Aguinis, H., Kraiger, K. (2006). Practicing What We Preach: Competency-Based Assessment of Industrial / Organizational Psychology Graduate Students. Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Inc. Retrieved February 7, 2008 from http://www.siop.org/tip/backissues/tipapr97/aguinis.aspx Ginn, W. Jean Piaget – Intellectual Development. Retrieved February 7, 2008 from http://www.sk.com.br/sk-piage.html Standord.edu. Structured Community of Learners. Retrieved February 7, 2008 from http://ldt.stanford.edu/~elenihan/106_site/redesign/clkthru_community_of_learners.htm Read More