In education, the fads are a bit more subtle as they take longer to implement and stick around for several years. They are not, however, necessary to the survival of education and may even be harmful to the students on which they are tried. Not all fads are bad, of course, but it is important to recognize one when you see it and then (and this is important, people) use your professional judgment.
When I began teaching eighteen years ago, I wondered why my freshmen couldn't spell the simplest words. For two years, I taught fourteen and fifteen-year-olds who could not spell words like definite or intelligent. When I asked them what the problem was, they informed me that they had been instructed using the inventive spelling method. For those blessedly unfamiliar with this "pedagogy," inventive spelling is "the practice of spelling unfamiliar words by making an educated guess as to the correct spelling based on the writer's existing phonetic knowledge." (grammar.yourdictionary.com) The hope is that the student will eventually learn to spell the words correctly by absorption. It doesn't work, and I can't imagine why anyone thought it would, but my students were subjected to it for three years of elementary school. These students are now in their early thirties and, based on their facebook pages, they still struggle to spell words correctly.
My first two semesters of college, I took Calculus I and II - sort of. I was part of an experimental curriculum, called Discovering Calculus. The book, which was an anorexic 90 pages long, did not have formulas in it. We, as college students, were supposed to figure out the formulas by intuition. The logic behind this approach came from years of students knowing how to perform calculus equations without really understanding them. While I understand that issue, I do know that students who passed those class could do the calculus they learned while I still cannot. There's a reason it took from the beginning of time until Isaac Newton for mankind to have calculus. Every student in my class went to a used bookstore and bought a real calculus book so that we could survive this class.
Now that I have taught for nearly two decades, I am left to ask myself where the professional judgment was in these teachers. Was there really an elementary school teacher who truly thought second graders would eventually figure out the spelling of words when the English language is fraught with exceptions to phonics? My calculus professors were not first-year teachers. They knew how to teach calculus to physics and engineering majors because they had done it for many years (one of them for decades). What made them think this would work? My guess is that in both cases, the people in the classroom didn't have a choice. They probably had it handed down to them by their administration because someone convinced those people to adopt the latest educational fad.
Those schools no longer teach inventive spelling or discovering calculus because it proved to be ineffective. If this were the fashion industry, that might not be a big deal. We all get to look back at our bow blouses and banana clips with nothing more than a blushing head shake. This is not true, however, in education. These fads are experiments, and the guinea pigs are our students. It is dangerous to try every fad in education without serious thought.
Lest you think that I want our classrooms to stay stuck in the model of two hundred years ago, let me quickly dispel that notion. I teach enthusiastically in a one-to-one school, and my students learn through the use of internet research, show their learning through video construction, and reflect on their learning through blogging. They collaborate on projects and review using every online tool I can find. I have digital textbooks, have flipped lessons, and use youtube so much that I don't know how I taught without it. There is nothing about me that resists the use of technology. HOWEVER, (and it is a big however), if a teacher is using technology for the sake of using technology, they are using technology wrong.
You owe it to your students to analyze your own pedagogy. The educational value of teachers lies in our judgment as trained professionals. Anyone can deliver information, but it takes an educator to decide on what to teach (and what not to teach) as well as the best way to teach, reinforce, and assess learning. When a new fad comes along in education, it may actually be a great new way to teach something, but keep in mind that it may not be. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Does the new way offer brain engagement in a way that the old way does not?
- Does the new way take away from brain development that the old way offers?
- Is there value to the new tool for more than one curriculum point?
- If the new way doesn't work, what long-term effect will it have on students?
- Does the new way teach a skill or thinking process that students will need in the future?
Sometimes, the new way is the best way, and sometimes it is not. My students blog because I decided that they would benefit from weekly reflection, that I could expose them to content there wasn't time for in class, and that I could ask them to empathize by using appropriate prompts. My professional judgment was that these were important enough goals to make grading seventy blogs a week worth it. My students make videos because script-writing forces them to put learning in their own words, but they do not make stop-action videos (unless they choose it) because I find little educational value to justify the time it takes. My students have collaborative projects because it is my professional judgment that much non-academic learning happens when people work together. My students also have solo projects because I believe that there must be times when students create on their own. The common element in each of these situations is that I do not just passively adopt the newest fad method or technological tool. I don't just ride the educational pendulum. Rather, I employ all my training and experience to make the right decision for my classroom.
Just as importantly, I am fortunate enough to have an administration that allows me to do so.
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