The readings this week vacillated between being very
interesting and just appearing to be a jumble of strung together words, with
key quotes I liked. The Parson’s article
discussed macro vs. micro differentiation in a somewhat veiled way. A question
I came away from this article with is what is the difference between micro
differentiation and “reactive teaching”? Isn’t micro differentiation small
changes you make while teaching? Not necessarily planned as your macro
differentiated lesson is. I thought this quote really summed up differentiated
instruction, but also makes you realize how massive of a task it is:
“Therefore, teachers who effectively differentiate their
instruction not only carefully plan instruction to differentiate for the
variety of learners in their classrooms but also provide moment- by-moment
adaptations to meet specific needs that become clear during instruction — needs
that were not or could not be anticipated”(Parsons, 2013).
I find it interesting that the Duffy & Hoffman article
is from 14 years ago but we are still having the same whole language vs.
phonics debate even if it is just on a minor level. I found this quote to be
interesting:
“Most U.S. elementary students are learning to read better
than they ever have in the past (Berliner & Biddle, 1996), are competitive
with students in other developed nations of the world (Bracey, 1997)”(Duffy
& Hoffman, 1999).
Is that still true? We did an exercise in one of my
undergraduate classes ranking different countries in different subject areas.
The U.S. normally faired in the mid-to lower half of the bunch when the
statistics came out. Though when I discussed this assignment with my brother, who
has a master’s degree in Political Science and is just a fountain of random
knowledge otherwise, he questioned the validity of the information since often
the countries that came out on top were much smaller than the U.S, (Finland,
Norway, etc.), so of course it would be easier to have a higher literacy rate
in a country with a population one-fifth the size of Texas.
Another quote I took away from this article was one of my
favorite from the readings this week:
“Such excellent teachers do not rely on a single program or
method because they know that good teaching requires "doing the right
thing in the right way and at the right time in response to problems posed by
particular people in particular places on particular occasions”(Duffy &
Hoffman, 1999).
I did not relate to the Tomlinson article very much. While
it has good general ideas, middle school is just not my game.
Finally the big article. The Shulman. I immediately
identified with a point he made, “Teachers themselves have difficulty in
articulating what they know and how they know it.” This reminded me of my
student teaching observations and the conversations I had with my supervisor
afterwards. He would ask me how it went and they ask me how I knew. This was
extremely hard for me to answer at first. The first observations always
warranted answers like the students were engaged, they asked questions etc.
Which his response to was always “and what else?” I think it would still be
hard for me to articulate an answer to that question now, but the practice of
it made me better.
Shulman (1987) articulated all of the plates teachers have
in the air at any given time, “the subject matter being taught, the classroom
context, the physical and psychological characteristics of the students, or the
accomplishment of purposes not readily assessed on standardized tests, are
typically ignored in the quest for general principles of effective teaching.”
Another point he made that stood out to me is that teaching
is a learned profession. A teacher should never stop learning or believe they
have all the answers. I think that is often a sign of a teacher who has given
up or is bored with teaching or the school system. There are too many teachers
who get far into their career and then never change their methods or point of
view and it’s their students that suffer. I can only hope when I am at that
point in my career I will still be open to new ideas. That’s part of the reason
I think having student teachers is so important because it often shakes up what
tenured teachers have concretely set up in their classroom.
On a final note I would like to discuss tailoring in class.
I don’t think there was enough in the articles about it besides:
“Adaptation and Tailoring to Student Characteristics:
consideration of conceptions, preconceptions, misconceptions, and difficulties,
language, culture, and motivations, social class, gender, age, ability,
aptitude, interests, self-concepts, and attention”(Shulman, 1987).
The term tailoring reminds me of this video from one of my favorite Disney movies.
I think that the reason that we are still having these debates is that it is much easier to pick a side (a method, a strategy, whatever) and stick with it, then it is to build a tool box of methods which can be used to "micro-differentiate". To answer your question, I assumed micro-differentiation was a synonym of adaptation. I agree with you. Professional stagnation or the inability or lack of desire to grow is the biggest reason that teachers fail. I too hope to always be in a place where I want to grow as a teacher!
ReplyDeleteThere doesn't seem to be any choice but to learn and grow as a teacher. Wouldn't it be very frustrating, especially if you actually care about your students, to see them not learning? Students change from year to year with new technologies and bring new knowledge to school, teachers have to change just to know how to communicate with their students.
ReplyDeleteHi There!!
ReplyDeleteI too hope we talk about tailoring tonight. I think the combination of the information from the Tomlinson article and the Shulman article helped me understand tailoring to be what teachers do to adjust instruction to the specific student. So, I might ask a more concrete/direct question to one of my language delayed students during an interactive read aloud, and then transition to a more interpretive figurative question or comment to a student that is not struggling with language during the read aloud. Am I understanding this right? I hope we talk about it tonight.
Hi All--
ReplyDeleteI like the way you all are thinking about micro- and macro-differentiation. I was kind of thinking about it a little differently (see my post), but I like the idea that macro is how teachers plan for different levels of learners in a whole group, while micro is more focused on individual changes for different students. In the end, I think good teachers do both.