Some (Hopefully) Useful Resources

Professor Plum may be critical, but he's not a Gloomy Gus.  [Ooops, blew several fluid oz of Sundrop out of my nose.]

He merely thinks that eduquacks need nothing so much as a harsh and repeated kicking down the street.  "Gee, let's see what happens if we don't teach kids ANYthing!  There's at LEAST a book deal in that!"

Following are some resources that Prof. P. has found useful.  Maybe you will, too.

Here's the link to the summary of a new book on qualified teachers.  Frederick Hess and others.

http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/papers/misapplied.html A critique of constructivism applied to math instruction.  John Anderson and others.

Review of experimental research on effective math instruction.  Bob Dixon and others.

Critique of block scheduling.  Jeff Lindsay. 

Part of the huge research base on Reading Mastery.  [I have no financial interest in the company.  I've just seen it teach kids to read pronto.]

Beautiful article on "developmentalism."  John Stone reveals the philosophical roots (if you can call nonsense philosophy) of progressivism, and how it came to infect schools.

Lots of instructional resources at Rory Donaldson's site.  Rory's a class act.

What schools could be like if they were run by bright, tough-minded folks; were insulated from the edubabble that surrounds them; and could select materials and create a unified curriculum. [In other words, there's not only reason to hope, but models for achieving this.]

Ditto the Princeton Latin Academy.   [An education that doesn't HAVE to be only for "certain" kids.]

"Looking for an Echo" (soundtrack).  Contemporary doo wop.  Haunting.

"Dion.  New Masters." 
Rerecordings of his music from the 50's and 60's.  When we cruised the summer nights in Lester's black '57 Chevy convertible--just as in American Graffiti, only moreso.  We were way cooler.

Comments

[slimedog]

Wow, that was quick! Good math stuff at U of Oregon and CMU. I think you just saved me several weeks of research and reading on math instructional design. I've got a passel of lectures to rewrite! With luck, I can put this stuff to use quick enough to make an immediate difference.

Background: I teach an upper division statistics course for EE students at a university in Texas. It's common knowledge in my department that our EE students have miserable math skills. This means we spend more time teaching math than statistics, and we "time out" before we can cover the more sophisticated statistical ideas that EEs need. A big part of this is that we rediscover the problem every semester, hoping that it had cured itself with the next cohort of students--fat chance. But another part is that we think we're teaching statistics, when we really need to be teaching math (with statistical applications). So that's what I'm fixin' to do.

My class bombed their mid-term week before last, and I've already restructured some of my lectures and homeworks. The latest homework set (day before yesterday) shows a big improvement, but I was winging it. Now I have a concise model to follow (at the U of O link), so maybe--please, Lord--I can squeeze out even more improvements. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks again for the links. Keep stirring the pot.

[Zippy The Pinhead]

The link which is supposed to lead to "A critique of constructivism applied to math instruction. John Anderson and others" is wrong.

[Zippy The Pinhead]

For the big picture in the math arena, people can see:

http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/reform3.pdf

http://www.coreknowledge.org/CKproto2/about/articles/CAStBrd.htm