Technique
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“In a step-by-step manner so that the learner has to show understanding of previous information before moving on”
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This is an interesting approach. First of all I think of a sort of No Child Left Behind kind of a vibe. However, reading more about it seems like it’s almost the opposite. In the SBST you allow learners to set their own pace and move along when they’ve mastered each step. This is more difficult from a teaching standpoint since your students are on all different phases, but I think there is some merit to doing it this way.
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“SBST embraces the basic concepts of adult leaming. Knowles (1984) identified five andragogical assumptions of the adult leamer:
1. Self-Concept: As a person matures, he or she moves from dependency to self-directness.
2. Experience: Adults draw on their experiences to aid their learning
3. Readiness: The leaming readiness of adults is closely related to the assumption of new social roles.
4.Orientation: As a person learns new knowledge, he or she wants to apply it immediately in problem solving.
5. Motivation: As a person matures, he or she receives motivation to leam from intemal factors.”
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I was mostly including this so I can write a little bit about these assumptions. I’ll take them one at a time. Now these weren’t put in this article to argue about but as underlying assumptions upon which to base their study. I want to take them in a different light and scrutinize them as assumptions for their own sake separately from the rest of this article. In terms of analyzing the article I will treat them as safe assumptions.
1- self concept. This seems true enough. However, I’m not sure if it’s completely self evident that all adults will become completely self-directed. It’s easy to become a person who consistently cuts corners, finds loopholes and weasels out of tough work. I fight these urges at work and at home all the time. Maybe I’m extra lazy, but I think it stands to reason that I’m not the only one who may feel this kind of thing even as an adult. It is probably true that the reasons adults pursue education are different than those of a child or even a young adult. In this way I suppose you could say that adults are more self-directed than non-adults. The question of dependency is also interesting as there are many young people who are terrifically self motivated and love learning for no other reason than the joy of it. These rules pivot on the general however and not the specifics of the aberrations.
2- Experience. I think this is generally true. We constantly connect things in our minds, developing relationships between past experiences and knowledge to what we are currently experiencing. The bigger your reserve of experience the more readily you can connect new learning. I think this is where adults have the biggest advantage.
3- Readiness. This one is a bit baffling to me. I dont’ know what is meant by saying “new social roles”. Does this mean that adults slide into different roles easier than younger people? I could see that being true but also I could see it being more difficult for an adult to become the student if they are used to being the teacher. This could go both ways.
4- Orientation. This seems to related almost directly to the experience assumption. It’s different enough to include as it’s own assumption, but I think I’ve already said my piece about this.
5- Motivation. This one seems related to the first assumption of self-concept. A person who is voluntarily receiving education stands to reason has a greater amount of internal motivation to succeed than a person who is compelled to learn something. Again, there are exceptions and it’s not one thing or the other necessarily but it’s probably generally true.
Over all I think I can buy these assumptions as general guidelines even if they don’t fit every learner in every situation. The benefit of thinking about these assumptions is that you can then use them to make decisions about how and what to teach. For example, if we assume that our students are going to be mainly self motivated then we don’t have to focus on grades as much. Or, if we assume that our students will apply their own experiences to what they are learning we don’t need to provide quite as much context (though it’s probably helpful to still provide some). It’s a valuable exercise to think about these kinds of assumptions and to play them out in your mind.
Over all I think I can buy these assumptions as general guidelines even if they don’t fit every learner in every situation. The benefit of thinking about these assumptions is that you can then use them to make decisions about how and what to teach. For example, if we assume that our students are going to be mainly self motivated then we don’t have to focus on grades as much. Or, if we assume that our students will apply their own experiences to what they are learning we don’t need to provide quite as much context (though it’s probably helpful to still provide some). It’s a valuable exercise to think about these kinds of assumptions and to play them out in your mind.
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“Step 1 required the leamer to form an equation from each inequality. Step 2 required the leamer to plot all equations on the same graph paper. Step 3 required the leamer to shade the required region.”
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This is how they layered their steps. I appreciated the simplicity of the experiment. It made it easy for me to follow and focus on the results of the study rather than trying to figure out what the subjects were doing. It also provided for the group to have some people who could do all three steps almost immediately and some members of the group who had to learn each step at great pains.
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It worked: “The experimental group's («2 = 19) posttest scores indicate that there was a statistically significant difference between the pre- and posttest scores”
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I picked this study because it was one that had successful results. Though, as I read through the results there was still room for some skepticism. The numbers were not completely trustworthy when analyzed in various ways. Still, I didn’t read the article to decide whether or not to adopt the step-by-step technique, but rather to read about a technique and how it was developed and/or verified in the experimentation phase.
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There was much that had to do with attitude in terms of student performance. Not all the students were self motivated.
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This was an interesting idea since one of the assumptions was that all the students where self-motivated adult learners. It became an issue here enough that it needed to be addressed. I don’t fault them for either making the assumption or finding the need to explain that it was not a completely fair assumption to make and that motivation of the students did factor into the results. It seems inevitable that motivation would be disparate among the students. Anyone who’s been in or taught a class knows that there are various levels of commitment and motivation.
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“The CI learers reported that their beliefs about leaming changed from conceptualizing it as an impossible subject to one that could be manageable provided that people were willing to embrace innovative methods that promise to assist student learning.”
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I include this because I think it’s encouraging to know that people can become more amenable to trying to learn something if you have a solid plan or technique. People sometimes have a hard time believing in their ability to learn and having something that you can show them and they can believe in (something different than what they’ve tried before) is an important concept.
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“To this end, a class of 35 learners laden with responsibilities, both personal and community and family, comprised the subjects for this present study. As a foreigner in a new culture, I was personally challenged to make a difference in the learners' lives of in a number of areas. As mentioned earlier, this present article seeks to explain the findings from work with the learners and provide teachers with a tried-and-tested, hands-on guide to presenting difficult-to- grasp mathematical concepts to learners.”
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I just liked the tone and sentiment of this conclusionary paragraph. It’s worth exploring best practices and new methods and techniques. There are some that may work best in some situations and others that will work better in other situations and having a varied and expansive toolbox will give me a better base for designing and executing instruction.
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