Publication: The Times Of India Mumbai; Date: May 15, 2011;
Section : International; Page: 18
Teacher stop the preaching, get innovative tools
Washington: "Who’s better at teaching difficult physics to a class of
more than 250 college students: the highly rated veteran professor
using time-tested lecturing, or the inexperienced graduate student
interacting with kids via devices that look like TV remotes? The
answer could rattle ivy on college walls.
A study by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist suggests that how you
teach is more important than who does the teaching. He found that in
nearly identical classes, Canadian college students learned a lot more
from teaching assistants using interactive tools than they did from a
veteran professor giving a traditional lecture. The students who had
to engage interactively using the TV remote-like devices scored about
twice as high on a test compared to those who heard the normal
lecture, according to a study published in the journal Science.
The interactive method had almost no lecturing. It involved short,
small-group discussions, in-class “clicker” quizzes, demonstrations
and question-answer sessions. The teachers got real-time graphic
feedback on what the students were learning and what they weren’t
getting."
Related link - Click here to read another full article.
Now, does it really requires a scientific research by a nobel laureate to tell us this simple fact ? Is not this an obvious fact that we all know experientially ?
This is our misfortune in the field of education that we don't trust the obvious and don't execute the common sense. Thank God (just an expression) ! that there are people spending their lives in proving the obvious to the masses.
Don't we know that we learn better by doing ? From Holt to the researchers till date having been shouting this and we know it for ourselves as well - STILL we don't object when our schools still go on emphasizing rote learning, lecture methods and theory.
Don't we know that we learn better when learning is fun ? But our schools are still disguised churches and our teachers - damn serious creatures.
Don't we know that competitions lead to undue pressure and don't always aid learning ? ( If you don't agree with this one, you just need to find few more researches proving the obvious ! ) - But still our kids are told to compete at all the places in all the times !
Sometimes ,I wonder do we really need a revolution in education or just restoration of our common senses and simple observations !
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