On Tue, 13 May 2008 06:48:00 -0700 (PDT), Beliavsky
<beliavsky@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>On May 12, 10:08 pm, Ablang <ron...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Despite high school algebra focus, more students need remedial college
>> math
>> By Deb Kollars - dkollars at sacbee.com
>> Published 12:00 am PDT Monday, May 12, 2008
>>
>> Five years ago, California took a bold step and began requiring
>> algebra of every graduating high school senior. The grumbling ran
>> deep. The work was hard. The underlying equation came through loud and
>> clear:
>>
>> More math in high school would equal more students prepared for
>> college.
>>
>> For many, it hasn't added up.
>>
>> In a pattern that has area math professors scratching their heads,
>> some community colleges are seeing an increase in the numbers and
>> pro****tions of entering students who can't do algebra, or even basic
>> arithmetic.
>
>They should read "The Bell Curve" or Charles Murray's recent essay
>"The age of educational romanticism: On requiring every child to be
>above average"
>by Charles Murray
>http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-age-of-educational-romanticism-3835.
>
>Most people are not smart enough to go to college, but they can be
>productive members of society. People who have not mastered algebra
>should not be in college in the first place.
>
http://secondlanguagewriting.com/explorations/Archives/2006/May/ForgetIQJustworkhard.html
Forget IQ. Just work hard!
I mentioned this back in December, but it's worth repeating. Dave
Munger ("High IQ: Not as good for you as you thought", Cognitive
Daily) re****ted on some research by Angela Duckworth and Martin
Seligman that investigates the question,
Could a more robust measure of self-discipline demonstrate that
it's more relevant to academic performance than IQ?
To address this question, Duckworth and Seligman conducted a
two-year study of eighth graders, combining several measures of
self-discipline for a more reliable measure, and also *****sing IQ,
achievement test scores, grades, and several other measures of
academic performance. Using this better measure of self-discipline,
they found that self-discipline was a significantly better predictor
of academic performance 7 months later than IQ.
As Munger comments, "Most impressive was the whopping .67 correlation
between self-discipline and final GPA, compared to a .32 correlation
for IQ." That's certainly impressive.
Self-discipline, of course, means that students spend more time on
task. From this perspective, John R. Anderson's ACT-R model of
learning sup****ts the stance that self-discipline is im****tant. ACT-R
is a theory of how people think and learn.
The original ACT (Atomic Components of Thought) model was the one that
posited the different types of knowledge, declarative and procedural.
Anderson and Schunn's article "Implications of the ACT-R learning
theory: No magic bullets", as the title suggests, asserts:
the ACT-R theory makes it clear that there is no magic bullet that
allows some way out of these enormous differences in time on task
[between 9th grade students in Pittsburgh and in Japan]. For
competences to be displayed over a lifetime, time on task is by far
and away the most significant factor.
This perspective is a crucial one for language learning. Many try to
speed up language acquisition through various strategies such as
mnemonics. As the article states:
There has been a long-standing strand of research in human memory
looking at the advantage of mnemonics and various memory-enhancing
strategies in terms of learning material. Such mnemonics strategies
have been recommended for domains as far ranging as foreign vocabulary
learning and learning of chemical formulas. However, the im****tant
thing to recognize is that these techniques speed the initial
acquisition of the knowledge. Speed of the first steps on the learning
curve becomes insignificant if ones goal is long-term possession of
the knowledge. Such mnemonics drop out with practice and the critical
factor becomes, not saving a relatively small amount of time in
initial acquisition, but rather investing substantial amounts of time
in subsequent practice. It is not clear that there is anything to be
saved in subsequent practice by use of mnemonics.
In other words, practice makes perfect--not learning gimmicks.
So, for Munger the question becomes, How (if we can) teach
self-discipline? For me, the question becomes, How can we foster an
environment in which self-discipline is the norm?
IQ vs. self-discipline
Dave Munger (in Cognitive Daily, a blog reviewing psychology articles)
re****ts on the findings of Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman. They
found that self-discipline was a better indicator of school
performance for 8th graders than IQ: Self-discipline had a .67
correlation with GPA while IQ had only a .32 correlation. In addition,
there was no correlation between IQ and self-discipline. This makes
sense. Anderson and Schunn (2000) assert that there are no magic
bullets in learning, but rather the most im****tant factor is effective
time on task. Munger wonders,
<snip>
--
Dorothy
There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..
The Outer Limits
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