American higher education enrollment decline
categories: online learning, teaching
Archive of ‘teaching’ category
Finland’s Phenomenon-based Learning
The Teacher’s Role in Finland’s Phenomenon-based Learning
Tara García Mathewson, The Hechinger ReportDec 10
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/55006/the-teachers-role-in-finlands-phenomenon-based-learning
Phenomenon-based learning is a lot like project-based learning, a more familiar term in the United States. Both prioritize hands-on activities that give students control over the direction of the project and both emphasize assignments that relate to the real world. They also emphasize student mastery of transferrable skills rather than a narrow set of facts identified by teachers.
Teachers have to make sure students know the foundational knowledge they need on a given topic to even consider developing a research question within it. They need to teach students how to craft appropriate research questions that can lead to interesting and engaging, and hopefully even original, research opportunities. And they need to pause the student-directed investigations to teach and model the skills students should be using on their own along the way.
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more on the FInland Phenomenon in this iMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=finland+phenomenon
Demoralization
categories: teaching
Bowdoin College education chair Doris Santoro, author of the book “Demoralized,” define the concept in moral terms. systemic pressures, such as top-down initiatives or punitive evaluation systems, can deplete teacher autonomy. As a result, teachers may feel they can no longer tap into what “makes their work morally good,”
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more on burnout in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=burnout
PISA Estonia China US
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/17/chinas-education-system-produces-stellar-test-scores-so-why-do-students-head-abroad-each-year-study/
Education scholars have already critiqued PISA as a valid global measure of education quality — but analysts also are skeptical about the selective participation of Chinese students from wealthier schools.
Second, Chinese students, on average, study 55 hours a week — also No. 1 among PISA-participating countries. This was about 20 hours more than students in Finland, the country that PISA declared to have the highest learning efficiency, or reading-test-score points per hour spent studying.
But PISA analysis also revealed that Chinese students are among the least satisfied with their lives.
Students look overseas for a more well-rounded education
Their top destination of choice, by far, is the United States. The 1.1 million or so foreign students in the United States in 2018 included 369,500 Chinese college students
hostility in U.S.-China relations could dampen the appeal of a U.S. education. Britain, in fact, recorded a 30 percent surge in Chinese applicants in 2019, challenging the U.S. global dominance in higher education.
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https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/12/03/us-students-gain-ground-against-global-peers.html
Immigrant students, who made up 23 percent of all U.S. students taking PISA, performed significantly better compared to their native-born peers in the United States than they did on average throughout the OECD countries.
The survey found that 15-year-old students from Beijing, Shanghai, and the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang ranked top for all three core subjects, achieving the highest level 4 rating.
Students from the United States were ranked level 3 for reading and science, and level 2 for math, while teens from Britain scored a level 3 ranking in all three categories.
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Looking for Post-PISA Answers? Here’s What Our Obsession With Test Scores Overlooks
By Tony Wan Dec 3, 2019
Andreas Schelicher, director of education and skills at the OECD—the Paris-based organization behind PISA wrote that “students who disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement ‘Your intelligence is something about you that you can’t change very much’ scored 32 points higher in reading than students who agreed or strongly agreed.”
Those results are similar to recent findings published by Carol Dweck, a Stanford education professor who is often credited with making growth mindset a mainstream concept.
“Growth mindset is a very important thing that makes us active learners, and makes us invest in our personal education,” Schleicher states. “If learning isn’t based on effort and intelligence is predetermined, why would anyone bother?”
It’s “absolutely fascinating” to see the relationship between teachers’ enthusiasm, students’ social-emotional wellbeing and their learning outcomes, Schleicher notes. As one example, he noted in his summary report that “in most countries and economies, students scored higher in reading when they perceived their teachers as more enthusiastic, especially when they said their teachers were interested in the subject.”
In other words, happy teachers lead to better results. That’s hardly a surprising revelation, says Scheleicher. But professional development support is one thing that can sometimes be overlooked by policymakers when so much of the focus is on test scores.
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https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/
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America’s education system is not bad. It is above average, in fact. https://t.co/O8msa0ZT8l
— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) December 9, 2019
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more on Estonia in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=estonia
Principals value coaching
Principals value coaching, but the model still isn’t widespread
Not only does the coaching model benefit principals and teachers, it retains veteran educators who have spent most of their professional lives honing their teaching craft. Not all educators want to climb the administrative hierarchy, and the coaching model gives this group the opportunity to become teacher leaders who pass on their insight to the next generation.
A recent evaluation also found when effective teachers act as coaches to multiple teachers, students gain in areas like math skills.
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more on principalship in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=principal
Boost Students’ Conceptual Thinking
3 Ways to Boost Students’ Conceptual Thinking
Coaching students to think in terms of concepts helps them understand how to apply their learning in the future.
By Carla Marschall September 10, 2019
Questions to Consider During Lesson Planning
To help students go from surface to deep learning, we can ask ourselves three questions:
- From the facts or skills being taught, which concepts are at the heart of the learning? For instance, a unit on the human body may be driven by the concepts of system, interdependence, and health.
- Which connections between concepts would we like students to make as a result of the learning? For example, in mathematics, we may ask students to connect the concepts of multiplication and division. In science, we may wish to see how they draw links between photosynthesis and energy transformation.
- What opportunities for application and transfer can we design to help students take their learning further? For instance, we may ask students who have learned about principles of art and design to create posters for a social or environmental cause of their choice.
Finland schools
At its party conference this week, Labour committed to follow Finland’s lead and not only scrap Ofsted but abolish private schools by forcing them to integrate them in the state sector.
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more on the Finland Phenomenon in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=finland+phenomenon
ice breakers in class
categories: distance learning, distributive learning, e-learning, hybrid learning, learning, online learning, teaching
https://twitter.com/brocansky/status/1176637420789358593
If you teach fully online, please share your favorite for ice breaker activities (include names of tools used if needed). Thanks! #OnlineTeaching #CCCLearn
I need some help. If you teach fully online, please share your favorite for ice breaker activities (include names of tools used if needed). Thanks! #OnlineTeaching #CCCLearn
— Michelle Pacansky-Brock (@brocansky) September 24, 2019
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more on ice breakers in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2019/02/22/reconstructive-analysis/
generalize vs specialize
categories: teaching
The 10,000-hour rule says intense, dedicated practice makes perfect – at that one thing. But what if breadth actually serves us better than depth?
difference between EU and US school systems
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION
| Published in Interesting Facts | Written by Patricia May
https://academic-writing.org/blog/differences-between-european-and-american-higher-education/
What are some of the major differences between schooling in Europe vs the US?
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-major-differences-between-schooling-in-Europe-vs-the-US
School Systems in Europe and America
http://www.moltke.de/inhalt/seite/school-systems-europe-and-america
Differences between German and American high schools
http://toridykes.com/blog/2014/6/20/schoolsystemdifferences#.XMxnkZNKhTY
Compare U.S., European Bachelor’s Degree Programs
Undergraduate programs in the U.S. are typically four years long, while many European programs last three years.
Kelly Mae Ross, Staff Writer Aug. 11, 2017, at 7:00 a.m. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/articles/2017-08-11/how-bachelors-degree-programs-in-the-us-and-europe-differ
European Universities vs. American Universities: We Win
http://www.thecollegesolution.com/european-universities-vs-american-universities-we-win/
Schools and class in Europe and America
The secret to a sound American education? Have rich parents
https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2010/03/29/schools-and-class-in-europe-and-america
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West, M. (2012). Global lessons for improving U.S. Education: international comparisons of student achievement illustrate the gains possible for students in the United States and offer insights on how to achieve them. Issues in Science and Technology, 28(3), 37–44. https://mnpals-scs.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=gale_ofa287392223&context=PC&vid=01MNPALS_SCS:SCS&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&tab=Everything&lang=en
Launched in 2000 as a project of the OECD, the PISA is administered every three years to nationally representative samples of students in each OECD country and in a growing number of partner countries and subnational units such as Shanghai. The 74 education systems that participated in the latest PISA study, conducted during 2009, represented more than 85% of the global economy and included virtually all of the United States’ major trading partners, making it a particularly useful source of information on U.S. students’ relative standing.
The United States’ historical advantage in terms of educational attainment has long since eroded, however. U.S. high-school graduation rates peaked in 1970 at roughly 80% and have declined slightly since, a trend often masked in official statistics by the growing number of students receiving alternative credentials, such as a General Educational Development (GED) certificate.
in many respects the U.S. higher education system remains the envy of the world. Despite recent concerns about rapidly increasing costs, declining degree completion rates, and the quality of instruction available to undergraduate students, U.S. universities continue to dominate world rankings of research productivity. The 2011 Academic Rankings of World Universities, an annual publication of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, placed eight U.S. universities within the global top 10, 17 within the top 20, and 151 within the top 500. A 2008 RAND study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Defense found that 63% of the world’s most highly cited academic papers in science and technology were produced by researchers based in the United States. Moreover, the United States remains the top destination for graduate students studying outside of their own countries, attracting 19% of all foreign students in 2008. This rate is nine percentage points higher than the rate of the closest U.S. competitor, the United Kingdom.
Abel, H. (1959). Polytechnische Bildung und Berufserziehung in internationaler Sicht. International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de l’Education, 5(4), 369–382. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01417254
Peterson, P., Woessmann, L., Hanushek, E., & Lastra-Anadon, C. (2011). Are U.S students ready to compete? The latest on each state’s international standing.(feature). Education Next, 11(4), 50–59.
Student Proficiency on NAEP
At one time it was left to teachers and administrators to decide exactiy what level of math proficiency should be expected of students. But, increasingly, states, and the federal government itself, have established proficiency levels that students are asked to reach. A national proficiency standard was set by the board that governs the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is administered by the U.S. Department of Education and generally known as the nation’s report card.
a crosswalk between NAEP and PISA. The crosswalk is made possible by the fact that representative (but separate) samples of the high-school graduating Class of 2011 took the NAEP and PISA math and reading examinations. NAEP tests were taken in 2007 when the Class of 2011 was in 8th grade and PISA tested 15-year-olds in 2009, most of whom are members of the Class of 2011. Given that NAEP identified 32 percent of U.S. 8th-grade students as proficient in math, the PISA equivalent is estimated by calculating the minimum score reached by the top-performing 32 percent of U.S. students participating in the 2009 PISA test. (See methodological sidebar for further details.)
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CAO perspectives: The role of general education objectives in career and technical programs in the United States and Europe
by Schanker, Jennifer Ballard, Ed.D., National-Louis University, 2011, 162; 3459884
Factors Related to Student Achievement in Mathematics and Comparison of the U.S. with Other Countries: A Study Based on TIMSS 2007 Report
by Patnam, Venkata Subbaiah, Ph.D., George Mason University, 2013, 232; 3591696
An analysis of international student achievement test outcomes and the competitiveness of nations
by Meyer, David D., Ed.D., Northwest Nazarene University, 2015, 119; 3719078