- The future in terms of the effects on human lives and the shape that schooling and education are likely to take
- The characteristics of a teacher in the new Informational era and the role of the process of professional career development.
- Predict the development of Education and Schooling in the future.
- How much does students’ education and school’s effectiveness depend on teachers?
Well, this is quite a topic! First, I will address these four required elements, but then I will share some of my favorite sites/tasks from the week and my insights on them.
I personally feel that education, at this moment, is not at its peak. Teaching at a community college, I see too many students come in with such apathy and an unwillingness to do any work or put in the necessary effort to succeed. I've taken quite a few education classes up to this point (I only have 4 left until I take my comprehensive exams to graduate) and I have yet to find an answer to why this is occurring. I have heard from high school teachers that they are seeing it also. Where is this coming from? At least, if we can pinpoint it, maybe we can CHANGE it. But, until we can figure out a way to change this, I don't see a very good future. We are telling students to go to college so that they can get a good job, but the truth is that there won't be enough jobs for the amount of students we are graduating. They come out of school in so much debt - because society TOLD them to - and now society can't help them pay it back. It seems like a cruel joke. I think many students are asking themselves "what am I going to school FOR?" and, because they aren't finding the answer, they don't take school seriously.
Probably the biggest change that education is going to see is in technology. To be a teacher in this new "Informational Era" requires innovation, creativity, and a willingness to try new things. Teachers need to seek out professional development if they want to "move with the times" and find new and interesting ways to reach and motivate their students. Unfortunately, funding is a major factor here as it is everywhere else, so many teachers will find themselves doing this on their own time with their own resources. This is why it takes real dedication to be a teacher.
In terms of future development, I think that education and schooling will move (slowly) towards more technology integration. I think that we will continue to see a push towards collaborative learning and learning by discovery (inquiry). As generations change, we need to find new ways to reach them, so education will constantly be in a state of flux (or, at least it should be).
No matter what the future brings, students' education and schools' effectiveness will always depend heavily on the quality of the teachers. No matter what your educational philosophy is, the bottom line has always been to make your students learn. We are the vessels through which learning takes place. Yes, we facilitate learning through our lessons, but we also serve as role models. Students learn from our example and so just our presence DOES make a difference.
So, now I will reflect on some of the things we were required to read/do this week. One of the first things we were asked to do (and again during our class meeting) was to define change, reform, and innovation. Now, I knew innovation had a different meaning from the other two terms, but I had always used reform and change interchangeably. Not so! According to dictionary.com, change is simply to make something different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone while reform is the improvement of what is wrong, corrupt or unsatisfactory. So, really reform is about fixing something. Change doesn't mean that anything was necessarily wrong with the way things were - we just need to adapt to our environments. So, reform and innovation are types of change. Or, as the professor put it, "Change is a result of reform or innovation." I had really never thought of this before, but it makes perfect sense.
The website that I found the most useful this week was http://www.mcrel.org/toolkit/. Here you will find the three domains of the school system - technical, personal, and organizational. You can also find the factors that are related to successful schools. It just takes some exploring on the site. This is a great resource for anyone that is interested in changing various aspects of education. Check it out!
I personally liked the definitions of the three domains. Again, it makes perfect sense, but we just don't think about it. The technical domain is all about what students learn, how they learn it, and how they are assessed. Basically, it is everything related to instruction. The personal domain contains issues related to attitudes, skills, and behaviors of people in the system. Basically, it is everything related to the school climate or culture. The organizational domain houses the resources and structures of the system, shich would include the external environment, government, resources, etc. Now, separating them out like this does allow one to come up with changes to each part, but they are all interconnected with each other. By changing one, we inevitably WILL change elements in the others, and we have to keep that in mind because it may not necessarily change for the better. The breakdown is helpful though because one can then make more focused action plans and really view change from either a top-down approach (organizational to technical), or a bottom-up approach (technical to organizational).
One thing that my instructor added to all of this during our class meeting this week was that reform was basically external and takes a top-down approach while innovation is internal and takes a bottom-up approach. When you link this with the domains, it really becomes clear!
By the way, my group made a really nice presentation on the differences between change, reform, and innovation. Enjoy!
This course has brought up some great, thought-provoking topics, especially this week. I hope you feel the same way!
No comments:
Post a Comment