J.E.Stone: Misdirected teacher training has crippled education reform - DAP and DIP

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Thanks to Dr Kerry Hempenstall for flagging up this hugely important paper and issue via the DDOLL network. He commented, “John Lloyd’s blog Teach Effectively recently noted that John Stone has written a report for the Education Consumers Foundation Misdirected teacher training has crippled education reform”:

Misdirected Teacher Training has Crippled Education Reform

J. E. Stone, Ed.D.

Education Consumers
Foundation

http://www.education-consumers.org



http://education-consumers.org/pdf/Misd ... aining.pdf

I've added it to the 'General Forum' because I consider it to be of very important general interest for professional educators and parents and not just of interest to those in America.

And why do I consider the paper to be very important and of general interest?

Because I, and others, encounter examples of the 'not developmentally-ready' mindset holding teachers and children back on a daily basis - in my long professional experience, in observing practice in schools currently and routinely, in discussions via various forums and via Twitter - in fact 'DAP' is a huge, huge holder-back of children's progress and teachers' progress as it is very much about 'teachers don't know what they don't know'.

DAP = Developmentally Appropriate Practice

[Debbie_Hepplewhite]

Some snippets from the J.E.Stone's paper:

Misdirected Teacher Training describes a doctrine taught to virtually all preK-3 teachers that has undermined the teaching of basic reading and math skills over the past three decades.

Called “developmentally appropriate practice,” its effect has been to prevent struggling students from catching up with their peers—even after 4 or 5 years of schooling. As a result, approximately 2/3 of all students, including 4/5 of minorities, have not mastered reading by grade 4—when schooling shifts from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” As a consequence, they gain minimal benefit from their subsequent schooling and seventy percent ultimately drop out or graduate unprepared for college or a career.

Teaching practices that enable lagging students to catch up have been available for decades but are little used because stakeholders in the status quo characterize them as boring, ineffective, or harmful.

Children do pass through stages of development and these stages have a bearing on the ease or difficulty of learning.

In fact, however, the stages have ambiguous dimensions, they change unevenly, and they are not easily identified even by researchers—much less by teachers with a roomful of children and on a day-to-day basis. Thus, given the exaggerated notion of DIP’s dangers, a DAP- informed teacher is less likely to guide, direct, or encourage an unengaged student than they would otherwise be—even if the student was merely bored, distracted, or shy.

In other words, by telling teachers, “when in doubt, assume that failure to learn is the result of developmental limitations, not ineffective teaching,” DAP encourages them to be inactive precisely where they should be proactive.

With regard to the alleged threat to student success and emotional health posed by “developmentally inappropriate instruction” (DIP), there simply is no credible scientific support. To the contrary, there have been thousands of studies that have employed systematic, explicit, and direct intervention without reference to developmental suitability and none have reported so much as a hint of adverse emotional or developmental outcomes.

DIP = Developmentally Inappropriate Instruction

[Dick Schutz]

Stone's paper could as aptly be titled "Misdirected Education Reform has Crippled Teacher Training." Either title. the paper deals with ideological differences, leapfrogging attention to the instructional products and protocols required for "developmentally appropriate practice" to yield reliable, observable schooling outcomes.

Stone's antidote, "Change teacher training accreditation standards,"--with no specification of a recommended alternative-- does nothing more than trickle-up failed pre-collegiate "education reform" logic to the collegiate level.

A better antidote: Give all kids an Alphabetic Code screening check exemplified by the test currently being administered to all primary school children in England. The screening cuts through the DAP-IDP rhetoric and will provide empirical evidence for resolving the ideological differences the paper deals with.