Friday, June 11, 2004
Educational gobbledegook
In the cultural battle, language is crucial. Many government departments have so fine-tuned their bureaucratic language that it's virtually impossible for ordinary readers to understand what's being said. The root problem is found in what is known in academic circles as post-structuralism. In simple terms, post-structuralism holds that all meaning is socially constructed - there is no objective reality, truth or 'big picture', but rather, dynamic forces of change and personal and group meaning only.
Few government departments can match the style and rhetoric of the Ministry of Education and the following is an extract from its recent Best Evidence Synthesis series. "Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling" (p. 1):
Quality teaching is defined as 'pedagogical practices that facilitate for heterogeneous groups of students their access to information, and ability to engage in classroom activities and tasks in ways that facilitate learning related to curriculum goals'. The term 'teaching' is used for simplicity but the term 'pedagogy' is also used throughout the synthesis. The wider focus on pedagogy ensures a broad consideration of the range of ways in which quality teaching is accomplished, for example, through culturally inclusive and pedagogically effective task design, through managing resource access for diverse learners, through equipping students with skills for self-regulation, and through training students in specific peer teaching strategies... High achievement for diverse groups of learners is an outcome of the skilled and cumulative pedagogical actions of a teacher in creating and optimising an effective learning environment.
And we wonder why kids are not learning!
In the cultural battle, language is crucial. Many government departments have so fine-tuned their bureaucratic language that it's virtually impossible for ordinary readers to understand what's being said. The root problem is found in what is known in academic circles as post-structuralism. In simple terms, post-structuralism holds that all meaning is socially constructed - there is no objective reality, truth or 'big picture', but rather, dynamic forces of change and personal and group meaning only.
Few government departments can match the style and rhetoric of the Ministry of Education and the following is an extract from its recent Best Evidence Synthesis series. "Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling" (p. 1):
Quality teaching is defined as 'pedagogical practices that facilitate for heterogeneous groups of students their access to information, and ability to engage in classroom activities and tasks in ways that facilitate learning related to curriculum goals'. The term 'teaching' is used for simplicity but the term 'pedagogy' is also used throughout the synthesis. The wider focus on pedagogy ensures a broad consideration of the range of ways in which quality teaching is accomplished, for example, through culturally inclusive and pedagogically effective task design, through managing resource access for diverse learners, through equipping students with skills for self-regulation, and through training students in specific peer teaching strategies... High achievement for diverse groups of learners is an outcome of the skilled and cumulative pedagogical actions of a teacher in creating and optimising an effective learning environment.
And we wonder why kids are not learning!
