Left Lane Ends

Mr. Meyer recently posted an interesting perspective on an equation he developed regarding the instructional worth of any given ‘lesson’. It looks like this:

Darren and I have discussed this briefly, and Darren even incorporated it into his presentation on INspired Classrooms. However, I propose some dialog on a possible modification, or on a concept that could lead to modification. I am thinking about a factor that I call the ‘xFactor’.

First, however, to get us started I will briefly review Mr. Meyer’s intention with this equation. Basically, he is saying that any decision we make regarding instruction in our classrooms should be based on the relationship between its final instructional value and how long it takes to accomplish the instruction (development and deliver, I assume). I totally agree with this as a general principle. If you can do a worksheet on paper, why in the world would you want to generate a self-graded Excel spreadsheet that does the same thing but takes more time for the teacher to create and for the student to fill out? Another way to think about this is to ask what the technology (or other instructional tool/method) brings to the lesson. If it adds something that can not be achieved without it, then it will be more worthwhile. If the technology is serving the purpose of just being there for technologies sake, then it is probably taking more time and interfering with the final intent of the instruction. That, at least, is what I interpret him as saying - and I completely agree.

Here is where I see a problem, though, and it can be described with a simple example:

Teacher ‘A’ and teacher ‘B’ both use the same lesson to accomplish a state-aligned instructional goal. After the instruction, teacher A’s students perform well on the given performance based assessment, as well the state assessment. Teacher B’s students, however, do poorly on both the given performance based assessment and on the state assessment. Again, both teachers taught the same lesson with the same final instructional goal - Teacher A did it well and Teacher B, well, stunk, but probably blamed the failure of the lesson on the students (’those kids’).

I think we can all agree that the above example is a very real possibility - after all, we all have different teaching styles and teachers have different levels of experience. My hesitation in embracing Mr. Meyer’s equation is that the instructional value, as perceived by individual teachers, will be different for everyone. Thanks to my own bias, I can easily justify any given technology or lesson as not being worthwhile - even though my perception of the quality of my own teaching may not be on target. And that, is the ‘xFactor’. Hence, my proposed equation for discussion is:

I am not really sure if this is the right way to put it, but I hate to provide a teacher looking for an excuse to avoid a powerful use of technology just because they don’t know the practice that is quality teaching. I think we all need to work to understand the level and quality of our own teaching so that we can, additionally, weigh our own xFactor into the original equation and know when it isn’t the technology that is the problem, but the need for improvment in our teaching. This would mean that we could see the net instructional worth, even if we took more time as we learned how to apply the instruction/lesson/technology to our final instructional goals. Self perception is a squirrelly thing, but one we should all work to identify so that we constantly apply that perception of strengths and weakness to challenging new knowledge about our teaching practices.

I have no clue if that came out how I heard it in my brain, but I do know that when we become more aware of who we are and reflect on the quality of our own practices, we’ll be moving down the path where the left lane ends.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 5:50 pm and is filed under curriculum, self awareness, edtech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.