Heather Robinson's Article summary and reflection

Summary of Heather Robinson’s article:

In Heather Robinson’s “Using Research to Analyze, Inform, and Asses Changes in Instruction”, she talks about the role of her graduate studies in improving her teaching method. She talks about how she discovered that she was just lecturing and giving the students a one dimensional way of thinking about a question, so that when the finals came out, a lot of her “better” students were failing or just barely passing the finals. She discusses that she wasn’t engaging her students to learn but more teaching them how to take tests. She begins to implement less lecturing and also promoting higher learning within the subject. She began to ask more thought provoking questions like what would happen if the question was changed this way or why it acted in a certain manner? She also implements a “jigsaw” way of learning where the students are grouped into expert groups and basically learn and discover certain topics by themselves. This promotes an outpouring of ideas by everyone and makes sure that everyone in the group gets the topics covered. Her new style of teaching seemingly pays off and her students do better in the final exams.

Reflection on Robinson’s article:

This particular reading is actually something I’ve discussed with a current high school math teacher. I volunteered with this math teacher and we discussed exactly what Heather Robinson talked about. He also took a graduate course in education and he implemented a few things that she discusses. Things like the jigsaw groups were something I particularly caught sight of. Upon hearing about it, I thought it was a great idea. Having students lead each other and educate each other puts more responsibility on them and they would find ways more interesting to themselves when they teach each other. At the same time it’ll be easier to manage and it does promote the quieter students to be more interactive and it promotes teamwork. The only thing I found with it and I’ve discussed this with that teacher is the time restraint. It would be hard to implement it because ideally you would give students a lot of time to discover new things for themselves. But now that the curriculum has seemingly been minimized and now that the provincials aren’t as imposing, this way of learning could actually be tried. It is something I’ve definitely been thinking about and hope to one day use it myself.