Do we really believe that all children can be successful? How does the view that a child’s potential is limited affect our ability to reach out to that child and inhibit her growth and academic success? The largely unexplored, and in some cases erroneous, beliefs held by many mainstream educators have resulted in ineffective and even harmful educational practice. The way we view students and learning affects what we teach, how we teach, and ultimately student learning. Some teachers design curricula as if diversity did not exist; they are unaware or unaware of how their students’ backgrounds or contexts shape their learning styles and affect their performance.
We prefer observation to traditional research pre- and post-tests and surveys as the best means of collecting information about people. Observation allows discerning the number and types of variables that impact learning in a particular context. For example, observation of infants and young children has shown that they are capable of processing information at a much more complex and abstract level than other forms of research have previously shown.
A second misconception held by many educators is that intelligence is a static, definable and measurable entity. First, even psychometricians themselves cannot agree on a common definition or theory of intelligence. Neither the instruments nor the quantification procedures used by the IQ psychometricians were able to produce precise scientific results.
Furthermore, the mental measurement of intelligence is by no means a prerequisite for actual success in school. No data set shows that any use of traditional IQ or mental measurement is linked to valid teaching and learning. Therefore, IQ measurement is a meaningless professional ritual, a ritual with unnecessarily harmful consequences, which undermines professional thought and action in negative ways, causing professionals to overlook successful educational strategies and approaches. It is a ritual that shapes the student’s self-image in a negative way.
Some educators make the mistake of thinking that intelligence is a fixed and immutable entity. This view is based on the belief that one’s IQ is a fixed amount that cannot grow. Those who hold this mistaken belief do not take the time to nurture the student because they do not believe that such nurturing can have any effect on learning. Consequently, teachers spend more time focusing on measuring ability and standardized test scores than on developing curricula that help students grow. This practice can lead to overreliance on test scores as indicators of future success. While some educators use scores from tests like the SAT and ACT to predict student success, these tests only show the degree to which students have been exposed to test material.
A third misconception is the doubt that society has about the ability of all children to succeed. This misconception about student ability has led many to wonder if schools can improve learning. And yet, there are many schools that succeed regardless of what IQ tests and popular opinion may predict. Some schools have developed a curriculum that is rigorous and demanding. The school day is longer than at other schools and students are expected to work hard to be successful. Since their inauguration, these schools have recorded student achievement gains of more than 48 percent on standardized tests. The teachers in these schools did not focus on what the IQ tests or the context indicated about student success. We must stop looking at why students and schools fail and instead look at how to work within each context to maximize success.
We are especially concerned about how education researchers confuse political issues with professional ones. Educators waste time developing standards against which to measure students, when they should be working on nurturing student growth. Confusing politics with professionalism can also mislead educational researchers into assigning professional motives to people who actually have a political agenda.
Does instruction really make a difference in student learning? The cognitive system represents the lowest level of learning. This is the level at which most classroom instruction occurs in the form of declarative or procedural knowledge. Declarative knowledge is information that is absorbed and includes, for example, memorizing historical dates. On the other hand, procedural knowledge can be described as skills or processes that students master, for example, using the scientific inquiry process.
In most classrooms today, instruction in science, geography, and history is heavily loaded with declarative knowledge. Math instruction is half declarative and half procedural. Language arts instruction includes three quarters of procedural knowledge and one quarter of declarative knowledge.
The next level in the hierarchy of human learning is metacognitive. At the metacognitive level, students reflect on their learning. They set goals for their learning, assess the resources they need, determine their own learning strategies, and monitor their own progress. Another broad area of the metacognitive system is the learner’s readiness for learning. Does the student persevere, seek clarity and exceed her own limits?
Topping off the hierarchy is the self system in which students think about how their beliefs affect their learning. Belief systems have a powerful impact on what students learn. It is the level of emotional involvement students have with their learning that determines its impact. Students’ beliefs about themselves, others, and the world, as well as their own personal efficacy, interact as they create goals for their own learning.
If educators know how to dramatically increase learning, why are students in so many of the nation’s classrooms performing so low? There are many reasons, including the lack of a solid philosophical foundation for incorporating innovations. Another is the lack of public support for the change.
Teachers must make conscious decisions about learning objectives and then design lessons to spark that learning. In many classrooms, the teachers themselves are unclear about the student learning they are seeking, so they may not be using the most effective instructional strategies. In fact, it is often difficult to identify the type of knowledge that is desired. Research shows that teaching vocabulary through pictures and confusing definitions has the greatest impact on learning. However, how do most teachers approach the teaching of vocabulary? Having students memorize definitions and use words in sentences. Similarly, the use of stories is the best strategy for teaching information that is factual or involves sequences of time or cause and effect. However, most teachers ask students to memorize the dates.
The meta-analysis reveals that, in terms of the learning hierarchy, if students do not believe that they can learn or that learning is important to them, then no instructional strategy will produce long-range and effective learning. Teachers need to be aware not only of the corresponding learning objectives and best instructional strategies, but also how to impact students’ beliefs about their learning. Only then will effective educational strategies result in significantly greater learning.
