Goals vs. Instruction

I'm reading an article entitled "Teaching and Learning Argumentative Reading and Writing: A Review of Research" by Newell et al, and I (really quickly) wanted to record a bit of research they discussed:

When having students write argumentative essays, several studies found that students with GOALS wrote better essays than students without goals; for example, half the kids had specific goals to cater towards their audience, or to refute the counterargument, etc. and the other half had no specific goal. They also found (separate study) that students with more elaborate, specific goals wrote better than students with vague goals.

Finally, a study was done where half students made goals and the other half did not; out of the students who made goals, half were given instruction on how to formulate an argument, and the other half were not. The goals group, as a whole, did better than the no-goals group. There was no difference between the students who received instruction and those who did not.

I've read several studies now for this class that concluded that instruction doesn't really make much of a difference. One of the other articles with this theme found that students who practiced collaborative reasoning (kind of like the Socratic Seminars we did at Rudy) performed BETTER on an argumentative essay than students who practiced collaborative reasoning AND had direct argumentation instruction. (Well, kinda: it's complicated. The CR only kids had more ideas, and more and better quality arguments. The CR + lesson kids had fewer ideas, but their arguments were more organized. What's the compromise that fosters tons of great ideas AND organization?)

So basically, if you teach it, they won't learn. If you let them think it through, they will learn.

a grad class as i imagined it

After the early afternoon class horror show, I was reeeeally hoping that my last class of the day would be at the appropriate level for me. And, YAY! It was! It's a course on the Trends and Issues in Elementary Language Arts/Literacies. There's a nice mix of doctoral and Master's students (well, just a few Master's kids, but a few is better than none!) and many of them are currently teaching.

THAT is how I hoped and imagined grad school would be: current teachers, doc researchers, and ex-teachers (like myself) sitting around and discussing issues related to education. We read some stuff prior to class and spent some class time relating the points in the readings to our experiences. We talked about actual examples of things that go on in classrooms, struggles we had, successes we found, and so on. Okay, cool -- this is the stuff that (as it progresses) has the potential to concretely make me in to a better teacher. Sweet!


A friend posted this link on facebook. Some of it seems right on, and some of it is questionable. But now it's time to do the dishes.
Thing to study and comment on later: http://www.mastersdegree.net/grade-inflation/
Another thing to think about later: Leaving murdered bugs on the bathroom floor: does it REALLY deter more bugs from coming inside?