A study at the University of North Carolina concludes that non-education majors who get just six weeks of education training are generally better teachers than those who get a full two years of education courses. (Starts singing Pink Floyd's The Wall... "Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone...")
FTA: "The [Teach for America] program trains and places recent college graduates with non-education degrees in classrooms in low-income areas. The study showed that in five of nine measureable categories - overall high school, high school math, high school English, high school science, and middle school math, students with Teach for America teachers significantly outperformed students with UNC-trained teachers. In high school social studies, middle school science, elementary school ready and elementary math, their performance was roughly equal to their UNC-trained peers. (In the other two categories, middle school algebra and science, there were not enough Teach for America participants to yield significant results). In some cases, the Teach for America participants’ results were quite dramatic. For instance, middle school math students with Teach for America teachers tested as if they had an additional 90 days of instruction - when the entire school year is only 180 days of instruction... Perhaps Teach for America participants excel because they are “untainted” by the education school mindset. The higher education reform movement is filled with horror stories about how the demands for ideological conformity, the lack of intellectual rigor, the low standards, and the emphasis on mind-numbing pedagogy over substance have chased away many serious students from education departments."
DISCUSS!
Original posting by Braincrave Second Life staff on Aug 8, 2010 at http://www.braincrave.com/viewblog.php?id=286
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Sep, 2017 update: Although Braincrave resulted in two confirmed marriages, the venture didn't meet financial targets. Rather than updating our outdated code base, we've removed all previous dating profiles and retained the articles that continue to generate interest. Moving to valME.io's platform supports dating profiles (which you are welcome to post) but won't allow typical date-matching functionality (e.g., location proximity, attribute similarity).
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