Teaching Frameworks:
Pedagogy
TFU:
Teaching for Understanding is an educational pedagogy that uses the following
four questions
as a foundation for its framework:
Four key ideas--based
on the four questions: generative topics, understanding goals,
performances of understanding, and ongoing assessment.
Generative Topics : These topics
of exploration have multiple connections to students'
interests and experiences and can be learned in a wide variety of ways. They are central to the
discipline, engaging to both students and teachers, and build on previous topics.
Understanding Goals : Statements
or questions that express what is most important for
students to understand during the period of a unit, a course (Understanding Goals), or over a long
duration, such as a schoolyear (Throughlines).
Performances of Understanding :
Activities that both develop and demonstrate students'
understanding of the understanding goals by requiring them to use what they know in new ways.
Ongoing Assessment : The process
by which students get continual feedback about their
performances of understanding in order to improve them.
Academic Frameworks:
Portfolio & Project-based learning
A portfolio in
the context of the classroom is a collection of student work that evidences
mastery of a set of skills, applied knowledge, and attitudes. The individual works in a portfolio
are often referred to as "artifacts."
Portfolios can
be divided into two groups: process oriented or product oriented portfolios.
Process oriented
portfolios tell a story about the growth of a learner.
Product oriented
portfolios are collections of work a student considers his or her best.
Implications portfolios have on the following elements of education:
-
Curriculum--Some
people believe that using portfolios will enable
teachers to broaden their curriculum to include areas they traditionally
could not assess with standardized testing. How well this works
depends on how much a curriculum is developed "to the test," in other
words, how much curriculum is geared towards achieving high test
scores rather than learning for learning's sake.
- Instruction--Portfolio assessment
appears to compliment a teacher's
use of instructional strategies centered around teamwork, projects, and
applied learning. Portfolios are also compatible with more
individualized instruction, as well as strategies focused on different
learning styles.
- Assessment--A portfolio can be used
as an assessment tool. External
assessors-- employers, evaluation panels, and so on-- can benefit from
them. Teachers can also utilize them to judge student performance.
Plus, students can use their own portfolios for self-assessment and
reflection.
Systems Thinking:
The character of systems thinking makes it extremely effective on the most difficult
types of
problems to solve: those involving complex issues, those that depend a great deal dependence
on the past or on the actions of others, and those stemming from ineffective coordination
among those involved. Examples of areas in which systems thinking has proven its value
include:
Distributed & Autonomous Learning:
".. those forms of
education in which organized learning opportunities are usually provided
through a technical media to students who normally study individually, and removed from
the teacher in both time and place."
-
Voice over telephone
(delivered by cable, satellite, over networks concurrently
with data eg the Internet Phone, and point-to-point or as a conference);
- television, radio, video text (and their
various media of access: live - including
terrestrial transmission, satellite, cable, streaming audio and video over
networks including the Internet; and recorded - video and audio tape, CD-
ROM, DVD and as files of audio and video data);
- the written word (printed, faxed, stored
as data files eg Word/WordPro, using
portable document formats eg Adobe Acrobat, electronic mail, mail based
conferences and bulletin boards and Lists - some Internet based);
- and computer based programmes that incorporate
many of these such as Lotus
Notes with its collaborative workspaces, databases of documents and files of
audio, video, graphics and links to other sources eg the Internet.
Policy Frameworks:
Economic Development:
No models for you.
21st
Century Skills
High Productivity
According to leading researchers, caution should be exercised when attempting
to link high-
stakes testing and high standards to the creation of a productive workforce (Levin, 2001).
Levin's studies in the 1990s led him to conclude that how well students do on current tests in
no way correlates to how productive they will be in the workforce.
High productivity currently is not a high-stakes focus of schools,
yet the skills involved
in this cluster often determine whether a person succeeds or fails in the workforce:
Media Literacy:
A Definition
Media literacy, then, is an expanded information and communication skill that is responsive
to the
changing nature of information in our society. It addresses the skills students need to be taught in
school, the competencies citizens must have as we consume information in our homes and living
rooms, and the abilities workers must have as we move toward the 21st century and the challenges
of a global economy.
In North America, while a phrase or word may change here or there, most media literacy
organizations and leaders accept this definition of media literacy:
The Ability to
Access
Analyze
Evaluate
and
Communicate
information in a variety of format
including print and nonprint.
Like traditional literacy it includes the ability to both read (comprehend) and write
(create, design,
produce). Further, it moves from merely recognizing and comprehending information to the higher
order critical thinking skills implicit in questioning, analyzing and evaluating that information.
1. Leadership | Education
