Dan Triplett writes:
-> We have difficulty in education arriving at common definitions for
-> the terms we use.  Outcome Based Education (OBE) is a perfect
-> example.  The originators of the OBE concept (I know very little
-> about its origins) had a specific idea in mind.  In our district we
-> implemented OBE and it failed miserably. Teachers throughout our
-> district were doing what they "thought" OBE was. Even with training
-> (which was minimal) there were wide gaps in our understandings.
I would bet that the insufficient training was a HUGE part of the
problem in your schools situation. It is difficult to implement
something if you don't even understand it in the first place.
Take "cooperative learning" as an example. I have done a fair amount of
reading (3 books plus a number of articles and discussions) and
attended a full day workshop, plus isolated sessions at professional
conferences on this topic, as it interests me. I still find it
challenging to pull off cooperative learning situations in my classroom.
Some of the teachers in our math department have been known to complain
about "cooperative learning". They don't like to do it and say that it
isn't successful. Well, seeing how difficult it is to implement even
_with_ some knowledge and training, I'm not surprised that they have
trouble (while I couldn't swear to it, I'm pretty certain they haven't
done a great deal of reading and etc.. on the topic).
-> Regarding your comments of "in terms," we need these terms to
-> identify educational concepts.  I agree with you that the real
-> problem is in the defining and understanding (and implementation) of
-> the concepts.
I guess we need them. Certainly having a term like "sponge activities"
is shorter than describing every time you want to talk about it, what a
"sponge activity" is.
Actually, in one of the math classes I took this past year, I remember
thinking as I did some of my reading/homework, how much information was
contained so precisely and clearly in a short statement, simply by
virtue of our having defined specific terms and operations earlier in
the course.
You know, some time ago I was reading...I think it was k12.chat.teacher
on the Usenet, and someone asked about "looping". I believe it was a
teacher from Canada who wanted someone to share their thoughts and/or
expriences on "looping" and whether it was beneficial, etc...
Someone else (I think  teacher from the States) asked what "looping"
was. (At that time, I didn't know what it was either.) The response from
the Canadian teacher indicated that s/he was incredulous, and couldn't
believe that someone didn't know what "looping" was, and thought the
person requesting more explanation was joking with her.
Jargon is useful and necessary, but the attitude that some people have
about what background knowledge others should have creates additional
communication problems.
Sheila
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