Friday 31 October 2014

Kids Prefer Cheese: your doctoral thesis in a sentence!

Kids Prefer Cheese: your doctoral thesis in a sentence!

Popular Teaching Methods May Harm Education

Teaching in same-ability sets and lavishing praise on pupils can do more harm than good, evidence indicates.dissertation writing help.

Schoolchildren in some schools are being taught using methods that have no evidence to back them up, according to a report by academics.

It claims teaching in same-ability groups, lavishing children with praise and letting them learn in the way they want to can do more harm than good.

Good teaching and teachers who fully understand their subject were found to have the most evidence to support a positive effect on children's learning.

Popular Teaching Methods May Harm Education
The report suggests lavish praise could do more harm than good
Professor Rob Coe from Durham University led a team that analysed more than 200 pieces of research to compile the What Makes Great Teaching report.

"It is surprisingly difficult for anyone watching a teacher to judge how effectively students are learning," he said.

"We all think we can do it, but the research evidence shows that we can't."

The report says some unusual methods work well, including challenging students to identify the reason why an activity is taking place and spacing out studies in a given topic.

The report was commissioned by the Sutton Trust, which aims to improve social mobility and tackle disadvantage in education.

Dr Lee Elliot Major, the trust's director of policy and development, said good quality teachers transform the achievement of pupils from poorer backgrounds.

"This research review debunks many of the teaching myths, but also reveals the core lessons for schools to help them develop great teachers," he said.

The report's publication comes as council leaders call for an independent review of education watchdog Ofsted, whose credibility they say has been called into question.

The Local Government Association (LGA) has pointed to a recent trend which has seen Ofsted downgrade schools after negative media attention, often overruling previous judgements handed out just months earlier.

It said that after the "Trojan Horse" scandal, for example, five schools were downgraded to "inadequate," in some cases just months after they were inspected and given a higher rating.

Post Credit: Sky New

Friday 24 October 2014

Why the UNC Cheating Scandal Doesn’t Matter

The numbers are staggering. More than 3,000 student-athletes at UNC, the University of North Carolina, are being implicated in a bout of academic fraud that’s spanned years. No, we’re not talking about their admission into the NCAA — that’s an entirely separate bout of academic fraud, one that’s perpetuated by professional leagues and colleges for its incredible revenue and service as a feeder system — but rather a series of classes that existed almost entirely in order to raise athletes’ grade point averages until they were eligible to play their games under NCAA rulings. Stop. The. Presses.

Why the UNC Cheating Scandal Doesn’t Matter
Streeter Lecka/Getty Images
 Next, we’ll be talking about how athletes are given benefits simply because of their genetic gifts and celebrities. Soon we’ll be talking about how scholarships for people who don’t project to be professional sports players aren’t quite as fair as the ones for those who are. buy dissertation writing services from dissertationwritinguk. Heavens to Betsy, we could even talk about how academics might not be the main focus for these institutions of higher learning when it comes to recruiting players to play for them. Perish the thought.

The fact is, the only reason this is in any way an outrage, controversial, or even newsworthy is because the NCAA insists on setting the terms of its masquerade around the fact that these are student-athletes, rather than student-athletes. This is insipid. College sports exist as giant sources of revenue for schools like UNC, and that money train is entirely divorced from any real idea of higher learning.

If you’re getting a full ride for your football abilities, you’re not being brought to Chapel Hill because they’re expecting you to become erudite and dazzle the other team with your dissertation on the Socratic Method’s appearance in the history of human discourse. To think otherwise — to act like there’s some shock behind the idea that these “fake” classes were not held to the highest importance by anyone involved — is silly.

UNC cheating sheet
Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

 We exist in a world where the NCAA is starting to have to pay athletes, and the illusion that these players are students in any meaningful sense of the term is really becoming that: an illusion. That’s not to say that there aren’t college athletes who don’t take their education seriously, but that it’s not very much of a stretch to say that the emphasis is on sports, rather than academics. Why there’s something inherently wrong with that has everything to do with the vestiges of amateurism as it relates to the NCAA, and exactly nothing to do with any sort of critical thinking.

The idea that athletes shouldn’t be on this separate track is misguided, and because they are, in fact, much closer to employees of a school’s athletic program than students proper, the outrage doesn’t seem to make sense. The only thing separating UNC from any other notable program across the country is the size and the scope of its “fraud,” which means that the moral outrage is largely unfounded. Being upset about it is, quite simply, standing on the wrong side of history when it comes to college sports.

Post Credit: Wallstcheatsheet