Teaching and Learning - Efficacy of Special Education - Assignment Example

Critical Analysis of the three among 10 notions about teaching and learning that hinder the methodical use of research-based instructional practices that prevent the efficacy of special education mentioned in William Heward’s The Journal of Special Education Vol. 36 Theorist William L. Heward believes there are 10 notions about teaching and learning that hinder the methodical use of research-based instructional practices and thwart the usefulness of special education. Heward presents a detailed analysis of the same in The Journal of Special Education Vol. 36 These ten notions are as follows: 1. Structured curricula impede true learning. 2. Teaching discrete skills trivializes education and ignores the whole child. 3. Drill and practice limits students' deep understanding and dulls their creativity. 4. Teachers do not need to (and/or cannot, should not) measure student performance. 5. Students must be internally motivated to really learn. 6. Building students' self-esteem is a teacher's primary goal. 7. Teaching students with disabilities requires unending patience. 8. Every child learns differently. 9. Eclecticism is good. 10. A good teacher is a creative teacher. Before we go into the critical analysis of these notions, it would be apt to define special education. “When practiced most effectively and ethically, special education is also characterized by the use of research-based teaching methods, the application of which is guided by direct and frequent measures of student performance" (Heward, 2003, p. 38) Apart from Heward, critics like Dixon & Carnine, 1992; D. Fuchs & Fuchs, 1994; Gersten, 1992; Kame'enui, 1994; Kauffman, 1993, 1998; Sasso, 2001; Stone, 1994 have also voiced their own perceptions about special education literature. Heward, however, do not completely outwashes these notions but emphasise on research based teaching practices. This particular paper aims to critically examine three of the 10 notions about teaching and learning that hinder the methodical use of research-based instructional practices that prevent the efficacy of special education, according to Heward. I. Notion 3: Drill and practice limits students' deep understanding and dulls their creativity Modern education pundits claim that repetition and memorization mars creativity and dwarfs learning. Terms like ‘boring’, ‘outdated’ and ‘mindless’ are often associated with the drill and practice method. Bartoli writes, “Having to spend long periods of time on repetitive tasks is a sign that learning is not taking place — that this is not a productive learning situation,” This propounds the belief that drill and practice teaching technique produces only rote memorisation and dulls creativity. However, there may be other side to the coin. Many have reasoned that drill and practice of fundamental skills does not add to the attainment of literacy or matured and critical thinking skills. These critics believe that the classes should be designed in a much more creative manner, catering to enjoyable activities and thus targeting at a deeper understanding. Kohn argued that “a growing facility with words and numbers derives from the process of finding answers to their own questions.”What he probably meant is that it is not required to put students to the drill and practice on basic academic tool skills. In a slightly different fashion the instructors should be stimulating the self-learning technique, promoting inquisitiveness and more accepting towards alternative solutions. In other words, the children should be encouraged to ask questions and to solve them themselves. In the course of creating their own meanings from these practices, the students would become confident readers and skilled calculators. William Heward writes, “I would welcome evidence of the phenomenon. It also places the cart before the horse; for it is facility with words and numbers that gives students the tools they need to solve problems and find answers to questions they or others may ask (Johnson & Layng, 1994; Simmons, Kame'enui, Coyne, & Chard, 2002).”8 To drive his point home Heward has given the excellent examples of the basketball and piano lessons. He writes, “No one questions the basketball coach's insistence that his players shoot 100 free throws every day or wonders why the piano teacher has her pupils play scales over and over.” He explains that in these particular instances, we all know that these skills are crucial to future performance and that regular practice is compulsory to perfect these arts to achieve the looked-for levels of spontaneity and fluency. Ironically, it would be natural to question the proficiency of the coach or music teacher who did not incorporate drill and practice as a key component of his or her teaching. Then why on the other hand, one would need to compare the approaches and attitudes to drill and practice by several academic teachers with the outlooks of educationalists who are held responsible for the competence of their students. The basketball coach or the music teacher needs no persuasion regarding the worth of drill and practice on elementary skills. Even in the modern education system, the teachers make the nursery students sing along the ABC song almost everyday. Not only that, why do we pray everyday? Remembrance and reassurance could be the possible answers but one cannot deny the presence of the drill and practice methodology applicable even here. After all, it may not be as wrong as pointed by so many sceptics. Brophy believes like many the teachers have the power to influence student’s learning but he came to this conclusion based on the connection between drill and practice and creative presentation: “Development of basic knowledge and skills to the necessary levels of automatic and errorless performance requires a great deal of drill and practice. . . . drill and practice activities should not be slighted as “low level.” Carried out properly, they appear to be just as essential to complex and creative intellectual performance as they are to the performance of a virtuoso violinist.” It would not be however, right to vouch for the drill and practice method blindly. Even Heward indicates that drill and practice can be carried out in certain ways that render it senseless and a waste of time. “Research has shown, however, that when properly conducted, drill and practice is a consistently effective teaching method. For example, a recent meta-analysis of 85 academic intervention studies with students with learning disabilities found that regardless of the practical or theoretical orientation of the study, the largest effect sizes were obtained by interventions that included systematic drill, repetition, practice, and review. (Swanson & Sachse-Lee, 2000).” Moreover, the “wiring” of a person’s brain depends a lot on the repetition process, claims research. In other words, the formation of correlations or synapses between the brain cells is based on the repetition theory. The brain cells would not be able to perform any act without these connections just like a flashlight minus batteries. Only when you place the batteries in to the battery compartment of the flashlight and connect the two, it can they produce a dazzling light. Neurologists have claimed that the one thing that ropes a child’s brain, or rewires it post substantial trauma is “repeated experience.” The key synapses do not form in absence of such repeated experiences. And once formed, these kinds of connections are rarely used to strengthen and reinforce the brain, considering they’re dead weight, and so, in due course, “prunes” them away. Heward is perhaps right in his notion that unless tutors educate according to practicable and universal learning principles, they cannot hold responsible the children of “learning disabilities.” II. Notion 4: Teachers Do Not Need to Measure Student Performance According to Heward, ‘teachers do not need to (or cannot/ should not) measure student performance,’ is a faulty notion. Supporters of this notion, however, declare that measurement of student performance cart off from authentic learning. For example, Kohn (1998) rebuked the educators who wished to measure student performance as possessing a "prosaic mentality,” and stated that "what matters most about learning may well be impossible to measure-and attempts to do so anyway may distort that which is quantified." Another critic, Heshusius (1982) asserted that "because of the required quantification and measurement, teaching and learning often do not operate at the levels of what is meaningful to the child and what is worth doing." He also noted that "[measurement tactics are] superimposed on but are unrelated to the human phenomena they claim to assess and that authentic learning does not occur in a stable, steadily progressing manner; rather, its visible outcomes are variable" Heward, however, disagrees with the above theories. He notes that direct, objective, and frequent measurement of student performance (e.g., curriculum-based assessment) “is a hallmark of special education.” Deno says it is inexcusable to make instructional decisions without records from direct and regular measurement. Assessment expert Grant Wiggins, president of the nonprofit Center on Learning Assessment and School Structure (CLASS), says that “when teachers assess student performance, they're not placing value or judgment on it — that's evaluating or grading. They're simply reporting a student's profile of achievement.” This could be similar to a cricket scoreboard that lists the batting average runs batted in and other statistics about a player without placing a value on performance. In order to assess a player's performance, you must consider other information, such as: Is the player a wicketkeeper who has a low batting average in general, but a high average for a keeper? “Therefore, for student performance you report about such things as absolute achievement, relative progress, scores for specific writing skills (not writing as a whole), and so on” adds Wiggins. It does not imply that simply because some facet of a student's performance can be defined, enumerated, and charted, it would be meaningful. Performance measures should methodically mirror the full range of authentic stimulus differences and response requisites the student will face. Heshusius (1992) also stated that measurement may be detrimental or hurtful to students: “Students are put through CBA/ DI measurement and control procedures.... Measurement driven ways of thinking about education thwarts authentic learning.” Some teachers may find relief and comfort in admonitions such as that measurement of student performance is not only a total waste of time but also an insult to students and a hindrance to their learning. This may be because of the obvious reasons that are- first, acquiring student performance data is a lot of hard work, secondly, once acquired, the data often implies extra work will be indispensable to amend instructional materials, reform lesson plans, and the like. Apart from this, as Bushell and Baer (1994) mentioned, “measuring what one hasn’t taught requires a decision about what to teach.” It is unfortunate that several special education teachers do not accumulate and use student performance data. It was found in a survey that although three fourths of the 510 special education teachers pointed out that it is "important" to regularly collect student performance data, many of them pointed out that they generally depended upon anecdotal observations and subjective measures ( letter grades, checklists etc.) to determine whether students were meeting IEP objectives, and 85% said they "never" or "seldom" collected and charted student performance data to make instructional decisions (Cooke, Heward, Test, Spooner, & Courson;1991). Kauffman (1997) provides a significant perspective to the special educators who shy away from frequent measurement based on obtained data and as a result do not make any instructional decisions.“The teacher who cannot or will not pinpoint and measure the relevant behaviors of the students he or she is teaching is probably not going to be very effective.... Not to define precisely and to measure these behavioral excesses and deficiencies, then, is a fundamental error; it is akin to the malpractice of a nurse who decides not to measure vital signs (heart rate, respiration rate, temperature, and blood pressure), perhaps arguing that he or she is too busy, that subjective estimates of vital signs are quite adequate, that vital signs are only superficial estimates of the patient's health, or that vital signs do not signify the nature of the underlying pathology. The teaching profession is dedicated to the task of changing behavior-changing behavior demonstrably for the better. What can one say, then, of educational practice that does not include precise definition and reliable measurement of the behavioural change induced by the teacher's methodology'? It is indefensible,” writes Kauffman. Now, the difficult question is how to assess students in a special education system. So far we have established the fact that measuring student educational development is imperative in developing and implementing instructional strategies and evaluating program effectiveness for the learning disabled child. According to Ann Logsdon, there are six effective ways to measure student progress in special education: 1. Observation is the key. It helps in achieving highly accurate, detailed, and verifiable information on student strengths and weaknesses. 2. Standardized Rating Scales are effective in measuring development in a uniform way as they can measure constructive and difficult behavior, attention, the child's independence skills and other areas. 3. Record reviews supply comprehensive information to measure student development In record review, information can be collected from school collective records, databases, information from preceding schools, medical and cerebral health data, samples of student work amassed in portfolios, and anecdotal records. 4. Criterion referenced testing displays student development in specific skill areas, a student has improved upon. There purpose is not to offer scores for comparison to peers. In its place, they focus on specific skills within a subject area. 5. Authentic assessment measures improvement in applied skills by rating students' performance on practical day to day tasks. 6. Standardized achievement tests measure reading, writing, math and content areas such as social studies and science. They give information on students' abilities in these areas. III. Notion 8: Every child learns differently When we say that “every child learns differently”, we often refer to a child’s learning style. To some extent every child has his or her own preference, when it comes to learning modes, especially in the early years. While some children learn through visuals, some gain knowledge through listening. On the other hand, there are children who are kinaesthetic learners. However, these individual preferences have a miniscule role than is usually recognized. In reality, all children learn the same. To make it simpler, they can only learn if their instructors, who are normally first parents and then teachers, follow practicable and universal learning principles. However, when it comes to fundamental instructional strategies, the fact remains that the basic principles work in the learning procedure of all children. “The most fundamental of those principles of learning is that variations in children's behaviour are selected, shaped, and maintained by the consequences that immediately follow those variations” (Bijou & Baer, 1978; Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 1987). This can be explained by a simple example. We all have different eating habits. Some like to eat with their hands, some choose a knife and fork, and while others like better to eat with chopsticks. Some slice their food into small morsels, while others gulp larger chunks into their mouths. Some chew their food nicely while others prefer to swallow fast. Despite there variable habits the basic rules remain the same. Each one of us would first place our food into our mouths, secondly, chew our food, and only then swallow the food. Eating would not be possible without following these three universal steps. Similarly, learning is not likely unless one pursues the universal learning codes. “If, in fact, teachers had to discover a unique way to teach every child, there could be no shared knowledge base of instructional methods, because every child taught would require a new and heretofore untested method. Research would be unable to contribute to a technology of replicable and reliable instructional tools,” explains Heward. Counter principles, however describe, for example, the practices by which a range of features of the environment obtain stimulus control over behaviour and in the manner which newly attained behaviour is continued and widespread. It is a fact that most of the teaching tactics and strategies have been derived from a reasonably few basic principles. It is important to follow a certain sequence in teaching too. It is important to understand waht exactly is the main key of the universal learning principles. It is but a fact that human learning does not take place on a lone level, but is a combinative process. It is impossible for a child to learn to add and subtract unless he has been taught to count. All efforts would be wasted, no matter how hard you try to teach the child addition and subtraction, if he does not know how to count. Thus, no one can refute that certain things have to be taught first, before it becomes possible to teach other things. Unfortunately, in the blind race of technology, and the present-day theories of learning,we are forgetting this very important principle of learning . In fact, whenever this principle of learning is mentioned, it is sadly, often referred to as a discarded notion from the past. The concept of a hierarchy of senses was proposed by Baldwin (1896). He proposed that sense perception aptitude mottled from person to person. As we go up on Baldwin's pyramidal scale we realise that each potential rests on, and is chronologically and psychologically reliant on, all the capabilities below it. For example, imagination is not possible, without its antecedents, perception and memory. Perceptual training and perceptual motor training were based on this notion of hierarchical training competencies, states Kronick. On the other hand, when this principle is observed, then its importance is often twisted by reductionist thinking such as, “Cognitive abilities develop in a sequential fashion that cannot be altered,” (Lerner, J) or, “Another prerequisite for reading includes a certain level of physiological development of the brain.”(Lipa, S.E.) . This principle that “The stratified nature of learning is an age-old — but ageless — principle” has been already indicated by Herbart (1776-1841), and it is supported by the additional principle that “one never apprehends anything in isolation, but always in terms of one's background of previous experience and learning. So the first consideration in properly organized learning would be to make sure that the learner had the right background.” (Mursell, J.L.) Thus, the notion that all children learn differently is somewhat misguided. Unless educators teach in line with practicable and universal learning principles, they cannot charge children of “learning disabilities.” References 1.) Brophy, J., & Good, T. (1986). Teacher behavior and student achievement In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.). Handbook 011 research on teaching (3rd ed., pp.328-375). New York: Macmillan 2.) Bushell, D., Jr., & Baer, D. M. (1994). Measurably superior instructioin means close, continual contact with the relevant outcome data: Revolutionary! In R. Gardner 111, D. M. Sainato, J.O.Cooper. T. E. Heron, W. L. Heward. J. Eshleman, & T. A. Grossi ( Eds.), Behavior antal vsis il education .Focus on measurably superior instruction (pp. 3 -1). Monterey. CA: Brooks/ Cole 3.) Cooper, J. O., Heron,T. E., & Heward,W. L. (1987). Appliedbehavior(analysis. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall 4.) Deno, S., Maruyama, G., Espin. C., & Cohen, C. (1990). Educating students with mild disabilities in general education classrooms: Minnesota alternatives.Ext eptional Children, 57, 150-161. 5.) Heward. W. L. (2003). Exceptional children: An introduction to special education (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall. 6.) Heward, W. L. The Journal Of Special Education Vol. 36/No. 4/2003 7.) Heward, W. L., & Dardig, J. C. (2001, Spring). What matters most in special education. Education Connection, 41-44. 8.) Kronick, D., New Approaches to Learning Disabilities. Cognitive, Metacognitive and Holistic (Philadelphia: Grune & Stratton, 1988), 9.) Lerner, J., Learning Disabilities: Theories, Diagnosis, and Teaching Strategies (4th ed.), (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988), 173. 10.) Logsdon, Ann., Learning Disabilities Guide;About.com Guide 11.) Lipa, S. E., “Reading disability: A new look at an old issue,” Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1983, vol. 16(8), 453-457. 12.) Mursell, J. L., Successful Teaching (2nd ed.), (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1954), 210-211. 13.) Senior Editor Meg Bozzone’s interview with assessment expert Grant Wiggins, president of the nonprofit Center on Learning Assessment and School Structure http://teacher.scholastic.com/professional/assessment/studentprogress.htm Read More