I honestly think the bigger sins of ITE are of omission rather than commission.
Yes they talk some nonsense, but the real problem is that they practice what they preach - they refuse to explicitly tell you much at all. It was all reflection journals and discussions where they ask what *we* think we should do. And exactly zero "this is how to handle this scenario" or "here's the best way to teach something like this".
Not once did you come out a lesson firmly knowing something that you didn't know going in.
I wouldn't assume that by getting schools to do the teaching rather than universities it will be any better (unless we have 'teaching schools'). I see no evidence that debunked teaching philosophies are less prevalent in schools than in university education departments. I work in teacher training I have noticed that experienced teachers doing additional degrees (e.g. M. Ed.) are more likely to believe in myths like learning styles - and they've usually been in schools for over a decade. Same with student teachers' experiences on placement. They learn all kinds of nonsense from practising teachers. Although as the author points out, this is such a skewed dataset at the outset (self-selected from a potentially quite ideologically homogenous group) I'm not sure much can be inferred from it that most fans of this blog don't already believe.
You wrote: "I wouldn't assume that by getting schools to do the teaching rather than universities it will be any better. I see no evidence that debunked teaching philosophies are less prevalent in schools than in university education departments"
And yet I wrote: "Such courses are unlikely to be much better than the ones currently on offer in universities — there was considerable agreement by Australian respondents that their teaching placements exposed them to flawed ideas — but they would cost students and taxpayers less and would be less of a barrier to entering the profession."
Maybe schools have enough on their plate without having to do initial teacher training as well.
Perhaps special schools devoted to teacher training, or an apprenticeship model with expert teachers who have a lot of time release and get paid. (Payment rates for mentor teachers are ridiculously low and haven't moved in ages, despite the fact that many student teachers learn as much from schools (both what and what not to do) as the do from universities. Except they pay schools about $600 and universities $20,000+).
Or maybe pigs will fly and the "Strong Beginnings" report will be implemented.
Looking forward to seeing how the other 667 teachers responded and the differences from different parts of the world. I hope those will be forthcoming. This is fascinating.
I know Greg has bigger fish to fry but great question.
I'll die on the hill that it's "data is". Hearing "data are" is like nails on the chalkboard to me. So I asked AI for its take on the grammatical landscape:
"using data as a singular noun is generally acceptable in most contexts, and for teaching or general communication, “the data is suggesting” sounds natural and widely understood."
I honestly think the bigger sins of ITE are of omission rather than commission.
Yes they talk some nonsense, but the real problem is that they practice what they preach - they refuse to explicitly tell you much at all. It was all reflection journals and discussions where they ask what *we* think we should do. And exactly zero "this is how to handle this scenario" or "here's the best way to teach something like this".
Not once did you come out a lesson firmly knowing something that you didn't know going in.
I wouldn't assume that by getting schools to do the teaching rather than universities it will be any better (unless we have 'teaching schools'). I see no evidence that debunked teaching philosophies are less prevalent in schools than in university education departments. I work in teacher training I have noticed that experienced teachers doing additional degrees (e.g. M. Ed.) are more likely to believe in myths like learning styles - and they've usually been in schools for over a decade. Same with student teachers' experiences on placement. They learn all kinds of nonsense from practising teachers. Although as the author points out, this is such a skewed dataset at the outset (self-selected from a potentially quite ideologically homogenous group) I'm not sure much can be inferred from it that most fans of this blog don't already believe.
You wrote: "I wouldn't assume that by getting schools to do the teaching rather than universities it will be any better. I see no evidence that debunked teaching philosophies are less prevalent in schools than in university education departments"
And yet I wrote: "Such courses are unlikely to be much better than the ones currently on offer in universities — there was considerable agreement by Australian respondents that their teaching placements exposed them to flawed ideas — but they would cost students and taxpayers less and would be less of a barrier to entering the profession."
So we agree then 🤣
Maybe schools have enough on their plate without having to do initial teacher training as well.
Perhaps special schools devoted to teacher training, or an apprenticeship model with expert teachers who have a lot of time release and get paid. (Payment rates for mentor teachers are ridiculously low and haven't moved in ages, despite the fact that many student teachers learn as much from schools (both what and what not to do) as the do from universities. Except they pay schools about $600 and universities $20,000+).
Or maybe pigs will fly and the "Strong Beginnings" report will be implemented.
Looking forward to seeing how the other 667 teachers responded and the differences from different parts of the world. I hope those will be forthcoming. This is fascinating.
Thank you. I plan a number of posts on this as I work my way through the data.
Data ‘is’ or data ‘are’?
I know Greg has bigger fish to fry but great question.
I'll die on the hill that it's "data is". Hearing "data are" is like nails on the chalkboard to me. So I asked AI for its take on the grammatical landscape:
"using data as a singular noun is generally acceptable in most contexts, and for teaching or general communication, “the data is suggesting” sounds natural and widely understood."
Our robot overlords have thus deemed it okay.