Sunday, June 7, 2015

Educational Myths

Out of the myths that were presented, most did not seem very surprising to me. I have heard many controversies on the idea of multiple intelligences but it seems to be something that teachers and educators think about. We know students learn best when they are more involved and use hands on approaches to learning, so why is multiple intelligences so “wrong”? I do agree with the article from Science Daily that students shouldn’t be labeled as “visual learners” “kinesthetic learners” and so on. Rather, lessons should vary with many aspects of learning styles that facilitate deep understanding and work well for all the students involved. In my classroom I want to make sure that students are not only enjoying learning and the information being presented to them, but also given multiple chances to gather information from different forms.

            Being educators with many resources available to use we can often run into issues with correctness and trends. The article by Will Thalheimer explains the falseness of a claim made about learners. Graphs, articles, and pictures have shown that the information saying that learners do NOT remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they see, 30% of what they hear, etc. As teachers we might take this into consideration when we are creating and presenting lessons. However, this information is not credible. Research is so important and something that teachers need to be aware of in order to be sharing effective information to their students. In my future, before claiming information to be valuable for students teachers I will need to research and research several different sources. Far too often the education system asserts that certain people, curriculum, and methods of teaching are going to work best for students. Teachers need to have their own opinions and say when looking at these aspects. With proper research and information we can accurately give students the correct methods, give fellow teachers the best people to model and change the minds of administration.