Tag Archives: professional development

Term of Art: Tracking

Posted on September 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

“tracking: A common instructional practice that assigns students to courses or curriculum programs with others who have similar academic goals or skills. Tracking often occurs as a result of student self-selection into programs or courses of varying levels of difficulty. In the past, tracking referred to the two separate paths that students chose to follow: college or a vocation. Currently, however, the term tracking is used to almost interchangeably with the term ability grouping and applies to all grade levels. As currently used, it refers to a decision by the school to place students in different classes according to their ability levels, the rationale being that it enables teachers to provide the same level of instruction to each group. This practice is criticized, however, by those who fear that students in low-level ability groups (or tracks) never gain access to challenging instruction.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Theodore Adorno

Posted on September 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Theodore Adorno: (1903-1969): German philosopher, one of the most prominent members of the Frankfurt School. With Max Horkheimer, he attacked the philosophical premises of the Enlightenment tradition. Steeped in Marxist theory, Adorno believed that capitalism turned culture into a ‘fetish,’ an instrument of repression; but contrary to Marx, he took a strongly pessimistic view of the long-term course of history. Instead of progress toward the freedom and fulfillment of all individuals, he saw increasing cultural and political enslavement to the capitalist economic system, aided by technology and ‘instrumental reason.’ He called this process the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment.’ Adorno was haunted by the question of how intellectuals could perform a critical social role without being co-opted by exactly the forces that they sought to criticize; he worried that social criticism might become a part of the problem rather than a part of the solution.

Adorno, who studied composition under Arnold Schoenberg, also wrote extensively about music. Some of his more important works in English translation include Negative Dialectics (1966), Dialectic of Enlightenment (1972), Minima Moralia (1974), and Aesthetic Theory (1984).”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Term of Art: Visual Perception

Posted on September 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

“visual perception: The ability to recognize and interpret visual information provided to the brain. Difficulties in visual perception are separate from and unrelated to impairment in the visual system that may diminish visual acuity or result in visual impairment or blindness. Visual perception involves the determination and discrimination of spatial information, as well as performance on tasks such as the discrimination of letters and words, geometric designs, and pictures.

Visual perception is an essential component of learning, especially in regard to reading development and to acquiring classroom information. Difficulties with visual perception may significantly affect and individuals ability to discriminate letters and words, and to work with mathematical information.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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Tour de Force

Posted on August 31, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Tour de Force: (French, ‘Turn of Force’) As a literary term it may be applied to a work which provides an outstanding illustration of a writer’s skill and mastery; a sort of ‘one-off’ brilliant display. Among modern examples one might suggest: Hemingway’s short story The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1938); Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon (1940); Orwell’s fable Animal Farm (1945); Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange (1962); Daniel Keyes’s short story Flowers for Algernon (1965); and Vikram Seth’s extraordinary ‘novel’ The Golden Gate (1986)—a narrative which consists of 590 sonnets in rhyming tetrameters.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

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Alan Simpson on the Educated Person

Posted on August 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

“An educated man…is thoroughly inoculated against humbug, thinks for himself, and tries to give his thoughts, in speech or on paper, some style.”

Alan Simpson on becoming president of Vassar College (1963)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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Term of Art: Relevant

Posted on August 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

“relevant: An adjective usually attached to an activity or reading assignment to show that it has some relationship to students own lives. Relevance has become very important in modern education, on the assumption that students want to learn mostly about ideas, events, and processes that they can connect to their personal experiences. The belief that whatever is studied must relate directly to students’ own lives ignores the fact that students need extensive background knowledge on which to build new understandings. If students learn only what is directly connected to their own lives, their universe of learning will be severely limited and dependent on their family and community resources.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Lingua Franca

Posted on August 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Lingua Franca: Frankish language: a hybrid language that serves as a common mode of discourse between groups or peoples speaking different languages, especially as a commercial or trade jargon; a useful makeshift lingo (formerly a language used in Mediterranean commerce).

‘The thought came to Holliwell that he had spent much of his life depending on a few local people, speaking some lingua franca, hovering insect-like about the edge of some complex ancient society which he could never hope to really penetrate.’ Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise.”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Term of Art: Substitution

Posted on August 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

“substitution: A reading error made when an individual replaces the written word with a different word based on structural or semantic cues.

A structural substitution is when the reader guesses a word based on its visual structure. For example, a reader reads the word stipulate as stimulate because they look similar.

A semantic substitution occurs when a reader replaces a word that means the same thing. For example, a reader might add ‘Then they went to her house’ as ‘Then they went to her place,’ replacing house with place.

Substitution is common in the oral reading of all students and by itself should not be considered as evidence of a reading disability. Tracking reading errors through error analysis can help determine reading patterns and problems.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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Elocution

Posted on August 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Elocution: The study and practice of oral delivery, including control of breath, voice, pronunciation, stance, and gesture (Has he taken elocution lessons?); the way in which someone speaks or reads aloud, especially in public (flawless elocution). An early meaning of the term was literary style as distinct from content, and relates to the Latin meaning of elocutio (‘speaking out’), one of the canons or departments of rhetoric. Elocution training in how to speak ‘properly’ (as in taking elocution lessons) was a feature of education, particularly for girls, in the 18th and 19th century. Shaw, who gave an extended dramatic treatment to elocution in Pygmalion (1912), added to his will in 1913 a clause giving some of the residue of his estate to ‘The substitution or a scientific training in phonetics for the makeshifts of so-called elocution lessons by actors and others who have hitherto prevailed in the teaching of oratory.””

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Characterization

Posted on August 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Characterization (noun): Portrayal or description so as to distinguish; the creation and representation of characters in fiction; delineation; the use in journalism of descriptive or categorical words as modifiers, sometimes irrelevantly (physical value judgments) and sometimes prejudicially (subtly moralistic or pejorative words). Adjective: characterizable; verb: characterize.

‘Characterization, too, can border on opinion, and should be excluded from the news columns. A paragraph about the President’s conference contained this sentence: “The ambiguity of his replies sent some men away convinced that the major policy change was indeed in prospect, but the White House later took pains to explain that this was not the case.” Strike out the words “the ambiguity of” and your retain the same meaning without the editorial flavor.’ Theodore Bernstein, Watch Your Language”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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