"Education has missed the boat, with respect to instructional design. Teachers come up with lesson plans on the fly, with little thought to why they are presenting information or even who their audience is. Teacher traning, at the university level and during Professional development, needs to focus on helping teachers become comfortable with instructional design principles."
I really would like to have a big strong rebuttal to this comment, but unfortunately I am at fault at certain points and days in the classroom. I feel that I put thought into my audience, but often don't take enough time to evaluate the results. We are so busy and pressed to stay with the district's timeline, that we just go on to the next unit, ironically possibly leaving children behind. In the past couple of years we really have started pretesting and post testing more and then creating intervention groups to help those that still didn't get the concept. I do feel that I spend more time in certain phases of the ADDIE framework. I think that the implementation phase is probably hit the strongest, and that possibly isn't the wisest. I feel that Instructional Design is a logical decision that should be utilized by teachers, but in the essence of time, its potential is not played out in most classrooms. Reflective practices have always been a goal of mine, but the articles reminded me once again that it is more than just looking at the grades in my gradebook. If I were to choose one, it would probably be the Morrison, Ross, Kemp Model. I preach "flexibility" in my classroom; so I think this one would be the best for me.
Oh my gosh, for some reason it JUST hit me that our district has been trying to get teachers to do this for 5 years now, with little success. It is called Curriculum Mapping and everyone despises it because of the time it takes and how irrelevant it has been. They have left off the key component, which would include the evaluation phase. Maybe one day it will take hold but the resistance has been evident.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great connection! It made me think of MTSS and how we are constantly evaluating students to see if they need extra teaching or are ready to move on.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you that we leave kids behind because we are trying to "push through" the content required. Maybe, if the teachers were the ones that made the plans for their own classrooms, it wouldn't feel so much like a one size fits all situation. I think there is good intent by having plans to guide us, but sometimes it just doesn't work for our kids.
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