Comment on Poll:Why do good ideas about teaching and learning have so little impact on educational practice

Original website: http://www.21stcenturycollaborative.com/2013/03/poll-why-do-good-ideas-about-teaching-and-learning-have-so-little-impact-on-educational-practice/

       I read the blog on the Poll:Why do good ideas about teaching and learning have so little impact on educational practice. And it really makes me think about this issue. I think good ideas about teaching and learning come from real world practice. It probably works for certain context but not necessarily work for other situations. When people go through professional training, they get a lot of chances to learn different teaching and learning strategies as well as approaches but when it comes to taking those ideas into the real classroom environment, they hesitate. Why? Because those good ideas come from others' practices, good ideas that fit others do not necessarily fit you. For instance, doing role play for English literature class is a good idea to motivate students to engage in learning, however, it probably won't fit in the math class while the teacher is trying to teach students the concept of decimals. But this doesn't mean teachers should not learn from others' good ideas. I believe we all can share knowledge about how to motivate our students to engage in learning. The key is to know you students. Students today are very diverse. They are diverse in many ways, such as races, nationality, gender, culture, socioeconomic background, personality and so on, which means teachers can not just simply take some so-called good ideas from others and put into use in their own classroom without even slightly altering the methods.  In order to really practice the good ideas teachers learn from others, they have to conduct assessment to get basic information about their students and then analyze the data they gather from the assessment to see if the new learnt idea fits their classrooms or not. If not, what can teachers do in order to still use the idea? I think it takes a lot of practice to learn how to really apply new learned good ideas.

       I think another reason why the good ideas about teaching and learning have so little impact on educational practice is because new teachers who just enter the educational field don't have enough experience to transfer what they have learnt in the training program into real classrooms. Recently I have been thumbing through part of textbooks to prepare for the summer classes. I feel overwhelmed with the large amount of information from these resources, particularly teaching in the secondary school. I am exposed myself to a lot of teaching strategies, and approaches, including how to plan differentiated instructions to serve all the students' needs. It is good that I am getting a lot of information about how to teach but when it comes to real teaching, I need to rely on myself to be creative and put all I have learned together to carry on a real lesson. But what is the chance as a new teacher designing and carrying out a successful lesson plan to meet various needs of my students? As a new teacher, I will prefer to counsel the veteran teachers who teach in the same school or district instead of carrying on what I thought is good ideas in the beginning of my teaching career. Since new teachers know they can learn more from veteran teachers, they don't have to tap into their brains and try to pull all they have learned through their education together to conduct a lesson. There are not a lot teachers who will dedicate their precious time to trying different new so-called good ideas.  If a lot of new teachers tend to practice the different ideas of veteran teachers, then they might turn themselves away from implementing new ideas into there classrooms. I would not surprise that a lot of so-called good ideas which researchers proved to be very effective have not been implemented into the classroom.

      This is my personal opinion about why do good ideas about teaching and learning have so little impact on educational practice. This opinion might change as I learn more about education. And I hope what I am going to learn will really benefit my future teaching.