Tag: DepEd

Posted in Curriculum Reform, Mathematics education

Why math education is failing

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A backlink to my post What kind of mathematical knowledge should teachers have?   brought me to the essay by Matthew Brenner titled The Four Pillars Upon Which the Failure of Math Education Rests (and what to do about them). Here’s the quote from the essay posted in Wild about Math.

Kids are taught math as pets are taught tricks. A dog has no idea why its master wants it to perform. With careful training many dogs can be taught to perform complex sequences of actions in response to various commands and cues. When a dog is taught to perform a trick it has no need or use for any “understanding” beyond which sequence of movements its trainer desires. The dog is taught a sequence of simple physical movements in a specific order to create an overall effect. In the same way, we teach children to perform a sequence of simple computations in a specific order to achieve an overall effect. The dog uses its feet to move about a space and manipulate objects; the student uses a pencil to move about a page and manipulate numbers. In most cases, the student doesn’t know any more than the dog about the effect he creates. Neither has any intrinsic motivation to perform nor any idea why the performance is demanded. Practice, practice, practice, and eventually the dog can perform reliably on command. This is exactly how kids are trained to perform math: do a hundred meaningless practice problems, and then try to do the same trick on the test.

Mr.Brenner’s observation is as true in America as it is here in the Philippines. This is a painful truth but something that we all must take seriously. I strongly encourage our teachers, those writing our new curriculum framework (I think this is our third within the decade), textbook publishers and our DepEd officials to read the entire essay. The author outlined the reasons why math education is failing but he also offers solutions which I believe are doable even if our average class size here is 60! Let me list the 10 point solutions:

  1. Understanding Must be Central in Math Education
  2. Textbooks Must Not be Allowed to Undermine Math Education
  3. Teachers Must Stop Teaching Math as They Learned It
  4. Curricula Must be Coherent and Cumulative
  5. Worked Examples Must be Emphasized for New Material
  6. Curricula Must Include Examples of Excellent Performance
  7. Assignments Must Draw on the Old and the New
  8. Content Must be Meaningful and Contexts Must be Rich
  9. Metacognitive Activity Must Pervade Mathematical Activity
  10. Language Must be Taught, Used and Evaluated Fairly
I do not agree with #5 proposal because I believe that mathematics should be taught in the context of solving problems but I think this is a very good list. Find time to read it. Mr. Brenner also offers very good sample lessons. You may also want to read 10 signs there’s something not right in school maths and let us know your thoughts.
Posted in Curriculum Reform

(Mis) Understanding by Design

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The country’s schools are now implementing ‘Understanding by Design (UbD) curriculum.’ Some private schools are implementing it at all levels while all the public schools are on its first year of implementation starting with first year high school subjects. I’m not a fan of UbD, especially in the way it is being implemented here but that is irrelevant. (If I have my way, I rather spend the money for Lesson Study.) But of course, I want UbD to work because DepEd is spending taxpayers money for it. But from conversations and interviews with teachers and looking at what they call call ‘Ubidized learning plans’, I am starting to doubt whether or not what we are implementing is really UbD. Here’s how UbD is understood and being carried out in some schools:

1. With UbD teachers will no longer make lesson plans. They will be provided with one. Here’s a comment on my post Curriculum Change and Understanding by Design: What are they solving? from a Canadian educator:

UbD may not be your priority–I gather that you see PCK and CK as the core issue. But at least UbD positions teachers as the decision-makers rather than imposing lessons on them…. I am not a UbD proponent, but I think it’s a structure I could work with, a structure I could infuse with my beliefs and goals, because it puts teachers at the center of the decision making, with student understanding as the target.

Indeed, nowhere in the UbD book of McTighe and Wiggins that they propose that teachers should no longer make lesson plans or that it is a good idea that somebody else should make lesson plans for the teachers. What they propose is a different way of designing or planning the lesson – the backward design. Continue reading “(Mis) Understanding by Design” →

Posted in Assessment, Curriculum Reform

Teachers teach to the test, students study to the test

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The DepEd is finally bidding adieu to multiple choice test. Better late than never, I must say. So my fellow math teachers, the next time you are required to make purely multiple choice items for periodical test or are given by the division, or by the regional office an achievement test in multiple choice, you can quote the following: Annex A – The Monitoring and Evaluation of the Implementation of the 2002 Basic Education Curriculum: Findings and Recommendations of the UbD-based 2010 Secondary Education Curriculum Guide for Mathematics 1 document released by DepEd. On page 9-10 of the said document you will find this report:

 

9. Teachers teach to the test, students study to the test.

The use of traditional assessment tools like the multiple-response, simple recall, recognition and application tests is predominant.  Rubrics, portfolios, and other forms of authentic assessment are not widely used.  Teachers are aware of the limitations of traditional tests and the need for alternative forms to measure higher order thinking skills.  However, they tend to resort to the traditional forms for several compelling reasons:

  • These are the types used in periodic and achievement examinations.
  • They are easier to score.  (Teachers teach as many as 300 to 400 students a day and scoring non-traditional measures like rubrics could be an ordeal.)
  • They are easier to prepare than the non-traditional forms like portfolios, rubrics, and other authentic measures.
  • These are what everybody else is using.
  • Teachers have inadequate knowledge of authentic learning and authentic assessment.

Documentary analysis showed that schools in general lack an institutionalized system of utilizing test results for diagnostic and remedial purposes.

Teachers tend to teach to the test; students tend to study to the test.  This culture is reinforced by supervisors who specify units to be taught and tested for each grading period and use test results more for judging rather than improving teacher and student performance.

Recommendations:

Schools should review their present assessment practices.  The teacher appraisal system and the kinds of tests used in the classroom as well as those, in the division and national examinations, should be evaluated against the goals and objectives of the Basic Education Curriculum, among which is the development of critical thinkers and problem solvers.

Schools should also consider the use of alternative assessment tools and techniques that would provide opportunities for students to experience learning as an enjoyable, delighting process of inquiry, discovery, construction and creation of new knowledge, rather than as a tedious process of cramming to pass examinations.

While schools should double their efforts for students mastery of the basic competencies they should also never lose sight of the fact that their ultimate goal should be the development of functionally literate citizens of a democratic community.

I think the DepEd forgot to include another reason why teachers use multiple choice test. The sixth bullet should be: The National Achievement tests  in all subject areas are 100%  in multiple-choice type form and the test results are used more for comparing schools rather than as basis for developing programs for improving teaching competence and performance.

The day the National Achievement Test (NAT) of the DepEd will include constructed-response type questions should be declared a national holiday because it will really mark a turning point in the history of education in the Philippines.

Posted in Curriculum Reform

Understanding by Design, one more go

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I have so far written three posts about understanding by design. The first is about my  issues about DepEd’s adoption of understanding by design (UbD), the second is about the information posted about UbD Philippines in WikiPilipinas and the third is about curriculum change and UbD. These posts are very popular especially for readers from the Philippines. This is understandable as our Department of Education wants teachers to implement UbD this June 2010, barely two months from now. I don’t know if there’s a training out there about UbD for our public school teachers. Maybe they will have one, a week before the school year starts this June.

Is this backward or forward design?

Anyway, I am writing this post because some readers land on this blog searching for things like “how to teach algebra using UbD”, “teaching integers the UbD way”, etc. I don’t know if they are just looking for lesson plans using UbD which they will never find in this blog or there’s a misconception out there that UbD is a way of teaching. It is not. It is more a way of planning your lesson rather than how to teach your lesson. In fact the only difference that I see between UbD and the current way of planning the lesson is in the format, not in the way you will actually teach the lesson. UbD says theirs uses backward design. In this model you start with thinking on how you will assess understanding before selecting and organizing your learning activities.  For lack of term, let’s call the traditional method forward design. In this model you think about how you will assess understanding after selecting and organizing your learning activities. In both models of course you start with your learning goals. In UbD it’s called enduring understanding, in the traditional one it is called objectives.

I attended an international conference on science and mathematics teaching a few months ago. One of the parallel session presenter reported her research which compares the use of UbD way of planning the lesson and their so called usual way of planning the lesson for science. She said the class taught using UbD performed better than the one taught using the traditional one. So I asked why is that? She said that it’s because the class taught using UbD used inquiry-based teaching and the class taught using the traditional lesson plan format was taught by lecture method. So I asked further: In your country’s traditional way of planning the lesson, is it not possible to organize the lesson using inquiry-based teaching and teach it that way. She said, “of course we can, and we do. It depends upon the teacher”. There you go. Backward or forward design,  it’s still the teaching and not the format nor the way the lesson plan is prepared that spells the difference in learning.