Return-Path: <nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id hBFKgJm28266; Mon, 15 Dec 2003 15:42:19 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 15:42:19 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <000a01c3c349$76c5a880$130101c8@workstation1> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "George Demetrion" <george.demetrion@lvgh.org> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-FOBASICS:900] RE: Managing Teaching to the test & more X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; Status: O Content-Length: 4660 Lines: 102 Thanks Andrea, I think we've shown there's quite an interest in having discussions like we've had during the past week. The challenge is going to be keeping it up, which can only happen through some serious collective engagement, including the willingness of some of us to push the envelope. We've talked a bit about learning, but haven't defined it. In the spirit of pushing the envelope, I offer the following reflection on literacy as growth as one example of what learning is. Perhaps other reflections will follow or reasoned crititicisms of the one offered here. Those would be welcome. George Demetrion __________________________________________________________ Literacy as Growth: Key Concepts * The capacity of students to make inferences and judgments as the precondition for the attainment of knowledge, in short, the necessity of actively working through what it is that they seek to learn; * The vital role of the teacher in helping students to bridge the gap between what student's don't know or can't do independently and what they can come to know independently through supportive instruction; * Linking instructional content to the life experiences, knowledge, and interests of students as the means of helping them expand into new areas of learning and knowledge acquisition; * An integrative approach to learning, balancing basic skill development in reading and writing with engagement of meaningful content in a wide array of areas. Instructional Materials and the Learning That Matters * Instructional materials are not ends. They are means toward the attainment of desirable ends. * Ends range from improving reading ability to expanding knowledge about various topics of interest. The resources that stimulate this learning, including instructional materials, will depend on how they are used and what meanings people take from them. * The primary value of instructional materials is their symbolic importance in terms of what they mean or come to mean for students. The need is to link instructional materials to significant life purposes, including that of learning to read and write. * That meaning, in turn, will be partly determined by what they mean for the instructor, whose engagement with the topic at hand, will partially influence what the students perceive. * Thus, what becomes symbolically important is often created through the learning process by the interactive work the students and the instructor do with the text. * In short, materials become symbolically significant by the work that is accomplished through them. Learning is a discovery process and it is that discovery among students of their capacity to learn through texts of various types in ways that connect to what they're interested in, that needs to be stimulated. * The critical challenge is to link subject matter with some question or problem with which the student is concerned while incorporating basic skill work with core content. * It is much easier to swamp a student with subject matter than to work it into his or her direct experiences. * The amount reading material is of little importance-the more the better, provided students have a need for it and can apply it in some situation of their own. The key isn't the amount of text covered, but the quality of the learning in terms of what students are able to learn in a given period of time and how that learning is significant to what they need and want to know. * The goal is to work through some problem or challenge that (a) is interesting to the students; (b) within their range with minimal needed support from others, whether the learning task is mastering sounds and words, vocabulary development and spelling, examining the meanings of texts they are studying, or writing. * The teacher's role is to supply suggestions, possible meanings, tentative explanations-in short, ideas that stimulate student thinking by providing various minimal prompts so that students can make their own inferences and draw their own conclusions. * A satisfactory learning experience depends on the quality of learning, and that means what students actually internalize. Effective learning only occurs when such internalization takes place. As John Dewey expresses it, "Nothing is really known except in so far as it is understood." * Progress in moving from one level of understanding to the next in a manner that students can assimilate is the goal rather than mastery of content material, per se. That is, the text is a tool in the facilitation of this growth-growth in learning and in useful and meaningful knowledge acquisition as determined by the students.
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