Posted on 06/27/2011 11:46:54 AM PDT by decimon
Pupils are expected to use effective self-regulation skills to take responsibility for their learning success. Since the 1990s this has been the guiding principle in the Norwegian school system. Yet a new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that this idea falls flat on its face in real life since relatively few pupils are up for the task.
Since the 1990s, policy documents and visions in the Norwegian school system have largely been based on the idea of pupils and students at all levels taking responsibility for their own learning and skills. This guiding principle has even affected Norwegian architecture, since new and newly renovated schools have been designed like shopping malls or open office landscapes with a strong emphasis on visibility and transparency.
One-third do well
The author of the thesis Aud Torill Meland studied how students and teachers handle the task of self-regulated learning at the upper-secondary level, and found that only one-third of the students manage to successfully take responsibility for their own learning. A majority are partly successful and one student in seven is not unsuccessful at all.
'The results show that not all teachers are able to sufficiently support the students in this process. The teacher's support, expectations and engagement are crucial for the students' attitudes and motivation.'
Lack of tools
The teachers on the other hand feel that their hands are tied.
'They feel they are too busy trying to meet the national learning targets – there is not enough room for letting the students help plan the learning content as the policy documents say they should. Instead the teachers stick to the more traditional way of teaching.'
'The teachers emphasise that they haven't received the proper training or tools they need to successfully carry out their new task. Nobody seems to have explained how to facilitate student self-regulation,' says Aud Torill Meland.
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How would the students know what should be the learning content?
Ping.
It was also sort of tried in America, in the early 1950s, but not to the same extent and also failed.
You'd think that people in the education field would know about this, but apparently they didn't get the message in Norway.
“It was also sort of tried in America, in the early 1950s, but not to the same extent and also failed.”
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I’m sure it will soon be re-packaged and re-branded and introduced again to schools accross the USA.
With the same results.
Something I don’t get from the article is if the students are to collectively help decide what the class will study or to individually help decide what each will study. If the latter then I don’t see how a teacher could keep up with it all.
The “education theorists” need to let teachers teach their own way.
Some teachers teach one way, and half the students like it and the other half don’t.
Some teachers teach the other way, and the opposite half like that, and the previous half don’t.
Fire the teachers that don’t teach. That’s the problem.
Norway has always been under Mob Rule..
Democracy is Mob Rule but so is Monarchy..
Democracy has been, is now, and always will be Mob Rule.. by mobsters...
Democracy is a lie.. no democracy has ever been democratic..
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. -V.I. Lenin
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism .-Karl Marx
Ooops. Hate when that happens.
I’m guessing pictures of Norwegian bar maids holding steins of beer is out?
IF the barmaids were serving beer at school, that might achieve some cooperation among the young males.
In states where there are statewide finals, such as N.Y., it is IMPOSSIBLE for it to be introduced in full scale. And now there are nationwide tests, so that makes it even less possible that this kind of experiment will come here; again.
At Summerhill, each student decided, for themselves, what they wanted to study and did so. That means that a kid who didn't care about math, didn't study it; the same re any other subject, after only very rudimentary learning ( simple math,how to read ) was done.
In N.Y., a class would decide what all of them would "study", from a choice.One class, in a public grammar school, chose South America for three or four years in a row, which, of course, meant that after the first year, none of them had to do any homework ( they already had all the papers, etc. done ), study for tests,etct.! It became a cause clebre and once found, was stopped. OTOH, there were a number of "experimental private schools, all over this nation, in the early to mid years of the 20th century and they tried out all kinds of outlandishly stupid stuff. Almost all of them failed rather quickly; though not all. There's still one that is attached to Bard College.
This article is a vague, so I can't help you there, because I too am not completely certain how it has been installed.
This nation needs to go back to they teachers were taught, back at the old Normal School days and have them all teach that way. We need to get back to basics, factual history, and no touchy-feely/group think racist/garbage studies.
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