Jag läste en mycket intressant artikel i tidningen – International Herald Tribune – om relationen till det tidiga lärandet i förskolan och relationen till lärandet som vuxen.
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Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.
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Det kan vara intressant att läsa hur man tänker om lärarrollen också. Det finns en hel del att fundera kring. Det handlar om de goda lärarna och vad deras värde kan vara. I rena pengar är lärare i förskolan värda sin undervisning i guld. Den frågan man ställer är om det är så att individen har haft förutsättningar eller om läraren har givit eleverna bättre förutsättningar genom undervisning. Låt oss läsa:
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The crucial problem the study had to solve was the old causation-correlation problem. Are children who do well on kindergarten tests destined to do better in life, based on who they are? Or are their teacher and classmates changing them?
The Tennessee experiment, known as Project Star, offered a chance to answer these questions because it randomly assigned students to a kindergarten class. As a result, the classes had fairly similar socioeconomic mixes of students and could be expected to perform similarly on the tests given at the end of kindergarten.
Yet they didn’t. Some classes did far better than others. The differences were too big to be explained by randomness. (Similarly, when the researchers looked at entering and exiting test scores in first, second and third grades, they found that some classes made much more progress than others.)
Class size — which was the impetus of Project Star — evidently played some role. Classes with 13 to 17 students did better than classes with 22 to 25. Peers also seem to matter. In classes with a somewhat higher average socioeconomic status, all the students tended to do a little better.
But neither of these factors came close to explaining the variation in class performance. So another cause seemed to be the explanation: teachers.
Some are highly effective. Some are not. And the differences can affect students for years to come.
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Ja, det är oss det hänger på – vi lärare! Det tycker jag om.
Om PISA och helvetesgapet att inte kunna läsa
