9486 in the collection
A US educationist claims to have the answer to failing schools – and it lies in literacy
Sad. Remember the good old days, when we look to the Brits for inspiration?
interview by Hilary Wilce
Robert Slavin is a leading educational psychologist who has arrived in the UK to head up the newly formed Institute for Effective Education at York University. He directs a similar centre at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and is famous for a ground-breaking school reform programme that now runs in 1,200 schools in the US.
Some critics argue that the Success for All approach is too prescriptive. They say no single approach suits all children, and a programme that visibly groups young children by ability is likely to make some children feel like losers before they start.
Slavin simply points to the evidence. Controlled experiments in the US have proved the effectiveness of Success for All, while the studies of the programme as it spreads in the UK, and in other countries such as Canada, Mexico and Australia, are showing similarly positive results.
"At present, most important educational decisions are made on the basis of marketing, word of mouth, tradition and politics, which then leads to the famous pendulum of educational reform, in which new ideas appear and become widely used and only then are evaluated. By the time the evaluation evidence is in, educators and policy makers have already given up on the new idea, and have rushed off on the latest new idea."
Instead, he says, we need more proven educational programmes, more rigorous and impartial reviews of educational research, and for the Government to provide incentives for schools to take up programmes that have been shown to work. The consequences of this would be far-reaching. "If government policies began to favour programmes with strong evidence, developers including publishers, software producers, university researchers and entrepreneurs of all kinds would have an incentive to engage in serious development and evaluation efforts. And seeing the immediate impact of research and development, policy makers might provide greater funding for these activities."
— Hilary Wilce
the Independent
2008-06-12
http://tinyurl.com/4tvbsd
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
[1] 2 3 4 5 6 Next >> Last >>
