Week+1

Discussion: I really enjoyed taking the teaching style inventory and giving my students the learning style inventory as well. I have the learning style inventory first just and it was interesting to see that they were also interested in what type of learning style described them best. I had many students that showed almost equal characteristics in all 3 categories, but most of them were visual learners, but not but much. After analyzing the data, I actually had pretty close numbers in all three categories. As far as my teaching style, I am usually a visual learner and also teach that way. I definitely have to work hard at developing lessons for tactile learners, but there just doesn’t seem to be enough time. I feel that learning basic skills are necessary for learning the more in-depth and application-based concepts, but there just doesn’t ever seem like there is enough time to develop and even teach lesson. One of the most interesting quotes from this week’s readings was that the American science and mathematics curriculum was "a mile wide and an inch deep" (Schmidt et al., 1997). I have always felt that we are just teaching too many concepts and just skimming the surface with little time to do any real investigation. This may be why I have the teaching style that I do. I definitely plan on using more constructivist principles in my lessons. I like the idea that learning is an active process embedded in the context, but it is much more difficult to structure lessons in this fashion. I know I need to design more lessons that "do not structure learning for the task, but engage learner in the actual use of the tools in real world situations" (Dabbagh, 2006). I just see so many of my advanced students struggling just to learn a basic process that I don’t feel that they are ready to dive into the higher order thinking skills and applications. Perhaps when I go to teach in an international school in China in August, I will be able to use more constructivist ideals and go further than just an inch deep.

Schmidt, W.H., C.C.McKnight, and S.Raizen 1997 //A Splintered Vision: An Investigation of U.S. Science and Mathematics Education.// U.S. National Research Center for the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Available:.

//__Instructional Design Knowledge Base - N. Dabbagh__//// Dabbagh. N. (2006). The instructional design knowledge base. Retrieved on March 18, 2010, from //[|//__http://classweb.gmu.edu/ndabbagh/Resources/IDKB/models_theories.htm__//]

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