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Progress and Mastery: Not Necessarily Mutually Exclusive, Part 1
By Sara Finegan
There has long been a debate about the issue of teaching to mastery. When districts and states set up learning modules on a schedule, or a series of standards to meet each year, the inclination of many teachers is to get through as many of them as possible. Some schools and districts place a great deal of pressure on teachers to move forward, and to keep moving through the year.
I’m not averse to having a set of outcomes to work toward and achieve each year for each grade level. I am against moving forward before our kids really have become proficient at new skills, strategies, and knowledge.
In a demanding classroom, we don’t get stuck in a routine of doing the same work over and over, and we don’t adhere to other people’s schedules about when learning should be accomplished. Instead, we focus on cementing new skills, step-by-step, concept-by-concept, so that when the foundation of math, science, and other learning is complete, there are as few weak spots as possible.
If you think about it, if we move kids forward before they really get the previous unit or skill, you are building a house of cards on quicksand. Nothing is going to really stick and the child is going to be aware on a pretty consistent basis that he or she is missing something.
And what are we teaching kids about learning if we do it this way? It seems to me that we are saying to our children: Learning isn’t about mastering information and strategies; it’s about zipping through lessons to completion rather than to skill.
Given that one of the major issues for kids with special needs is that they rush through work, getting it done rather than getting it right, aren’t we re-enforcing their own poor learning habits when we teach to completion over quality?
Many will argue that teaching to mastery takes too much time, and that we don’t have the extra hours or days to ensure that all of our students become proficient at each new lesson.
I disagree. It isn’t necessarily so. It all depends on how we teach the new information or skills, and what kind and what quality of practice we give our students.
It also depends on the manner in which we release responsibility back to kids as they work. If we jump too quickly from “I show you” to “you do it,” mastery will take much longer than if we move, increment by increment, from “I show you,” to “I show you again,” to “we do it together,” to “we do it together more,” to “you and a partner do it,, to “try it again, and I’ll be right here,” to “hey, try it and I’ll step back a bit,” to “hey, you can do this!”
All of that, by the way, doesn’t take place in math, for example, for weeks and weeks; it’s really a matter of days.
1 Comment for Progress and Mastery: Not Necessarily Mutually Exclusive, Part 1
Tracy Boyd | November 19, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Sara,
This article really hit home for me. I have a child on the Autistic spectrum. He is currently in a Verbal Behavior classroom under the Umbrella of the Pennsylvania Verbal Behavior Project. This class is basically 7 non-verbal children,most of whom have never been in a verbal behavior program, so therefore are speaking/communicating very little to not at all.
Mastery is an integral part of the program. I was skeptical at first as to the repetetiveness of some of the targets. Since we are basically starting from scratch,my son did not have a cache of mastered objectives to sprinkle throughout the target objectives. Basically they began with 10 different objectives, and would not move on/add until he mastered any of those. But in your blog you say, “in a demanding classroom,we don’t get stuck in a routine of doing the same work over and over”. This is really key. And it is exactly what I wanted to prevent in my son’s program, all the while staying on course towards the
mastery of objectives.
I noticed that they were drilling him with targets that I know Max can say/sign on some level. I felt that it was equivelant to showing neurotypical kindergartener a square, a circle and a triangle all day,from 9:00 am to 3:00pm. I felt Max was bored. This is why an open, working IEP is so imperative with feedback from all involved, including family that knows the child best. We decided to pepper Max’s intensive training sessions with objectives, that may not be mastered in the true sense of the word, but uses at home usefully. In Max’s case, it is about 50 photo flash cards that he can label,either by verbal approximation or by sign language. He also enjoys these drilling exercises. So,during his intensive training, he is drilled with these “knowns” and the targets will be slipped in. This concept works at home, and I feel that it will be successful at school as well.
Great article, Sara. I’m amidst an overhaul of my child’s IEP; I’ve really been finding your blogs interesting, informative and very helpful!