“Teachers…are particularly beset by the temptation to tell what they know…. Yet no amount of information, whether of theory or fact, in itself improves insight and judgment or increases ability to act wisely.”
Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.
“Cognitive Theory: A major cluster of theories in social psychology, which focus upon the links between mental processes (such as perception, memory, attitudes, or decision making), and social behavior. At a general level such theories are opposed to behaviorism, and suggest that human beings are active in selecting stimuli, constructing meanings, and making sense of their worlds. There are many branches of cognitive theory, including Fritz Heider’s cognitive balance theory, Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory, George Kelly’s personal construct theory, and attribution theory. (See J.R. Eiser, Cognitive Social Psychology, 1980).”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
“Exegesis: In Roman times the exegetes were professional and official interpreters of charms, omens, dreams, sacred law and oracular pronouncements. Thus the term has come to mean an explanation or interpretation and is often applied to biblical studies. As far as literature is concerned, it covers critical analysis and the elucidation of difficulties in the text. A variorum edition (q.v.), for example, contains a great deal of exegesis.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Weltanschauung: A German term which refers to the ‘world-view’ or ‘philosophy of life’ of different groups within society. For example, it is sometimes argued that the long-term unemployed have a fatalistic outlook, the middle classes an individualistic approach to life, while members of the working class hold a set of beliefs and attitudes which emphasize collectivism. Sociologists have posed a number of interesting questions around this topic. Do particular social groups actually adhere to identifiable world-views? If so, how do individuals come to hold specific images of society, and what is the relationship between membership of a group and an individual’s subjective representations of it? The major problem confronting sociologists who address these issues is that of defining and describing a world-view itself. What beliefs and values may be said to constitute a world-view? Should we even expect people to hold to consistent world-views, given that (for example) research on class imagery suggests that, more often than not, people’s attitudes and values are inconsistent or ambiguous, and rarely form a coherent whole? In short, use of this term usually points to a certain imprecision in an argument, and almost invariably indicates that data appropriate to the particular case are wanting.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Here is a lesson plan on Aesop’s Fable “The Mischievous Dog.” Here also is a worksheet with the fable itself and some comprehension questions. These lessons, which I had just begun to develop when I left my final job in public education, have a lot of room for amplification, and therefore improvement.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Dewey’s genius grasped the educational principles underlying such sequences. Coming to understand an established idea in school must be made more like discovering a new idea than like hearing adult knowledge explained point by point. We learn complex and abstract ideas through a zigzag sequence of trial, error, reflection, and adjustment. As the facets tell us, the student needs to interpret, apply, see from different points of view, and so forth, all of which imply different sequences than those found in a catalog of existing knowledge. We cannot fully understand an idea until we retrace, relive, or recapitulate some of its history—how it came to be understood in the first place. The young learner should be treated as a discoverer, even if the path seemed inefficient. That’s why Piaget argued ‘to understand is to invent.’”
Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.
[As school closures, and therefore homebound children, mount during this COVID19 crisis, I cannot think of a better time to post this squib on the way I was educated in high school and college, and a particularly sound method of education for children in our current circumstances.]
“project-based learning: A teaching technique in which students learn by doing, engaging in activities that lead to the creation of products based on their own experiences. The project method was first described in 1918 by William Heard Kilpatrick of Teachers College, Columbia University, who hoped to replace subject-matter teaching with real-life projects chosen by students.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“The Invisible Man: The title of two very different novels. The first is a work of science fiction by H.G. Wells (1866-1946), published in 1897. In this story a scientist finds the secret of invisibility, which lures him into temptation. The first film version(1933), starring Claude Rains, was highly regarded, but its several sequels less so.
The second novel with this title was by the black US writer Ralph Ellison (1914-94). Published in 1952, it won the 1953 National Book Award for fiction. The novel tells the story of a Southern black who moves to New York, participates in the struggle against white oppression, and ends up ignored and living in a coal hole.
I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fibre and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
The Invisible Man, prologue.
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“absolutism (deriv. Lat. legibus absolutus, absolved from the laws.) System of unlimited government in which the governed possess no representation, right to vote or part in the administration and in which there are no legal or constitutional restraints on the ruler.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged philosophy/religion, term of art
“What about adults? Would the process of reading Billy Bathgate have been different if I had read it on paper rather than my Kindle? Experiments investigating this question have mostly examined the types of texts students would encounter in school—an expository text describing the function of the heart, for example—but have in some cases included narratives as well. Most studies have shown that reading from paper holds a small edge over reading from a screen either in reading comprehension or reading speed. People often report that reading from a screen feels more effortful, although at least one study shows not difference when more objective measures of effort were used.
Why would reading on a screen be different? Small changes in design can prompt small changes in comprehension. For example, comprehension is better if you navigate a book by flipping virtual pages, compared to scrolling. And clickable links (hyperlinks) incur a cost to comprehension, even if you don’t click them. Because you can see that they are clickable, you still need to make a decision about whether or not to click. That draws on your attention, and so carries a cost to comprehension. Although it has not been fully investigated yet, researchers suspect that the three-dimensionality of paper books may be important—it’s easier to remember an event as occurring at the end of a book with the spatial cue that it happened on a page near the back of the book. These small effects often add up to slight knock to comprehension when reading from a screen.”
Excerpted from: Willingham, Daniel T. The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017.
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