Slashdot Mirror
UK Computing Teachers Concerned That Pupils Know More Than Them
mikejuk (1801200) writes A survey of UK schools carried out by Microsoft and Computing at School reveals some worrying statistics that are probably more widely applicable. The survey revealed that (68%) of primary and secondary teachers are concerned that their pupils have a better understanding of computing than they do. Moreover, the pupils reinforced this finding with 47% claiming that their teachers need more training. Again to push the point home, 41% of pupils admitted to regularly helping their teachers with technology. This isn't all due to the teachers being new at the task — 76% had taught computing before the new curriculum was introduced. It seems that switching from an approach that emphasised computer literacy to one that actually wants students to do more difficult things is the reason for the problem.
I'm pretty sure I knew math, science and sometimes English better than my teachers through high school. Experienced teachers know how to deal with students like us - how would this be any different?
Even back in the 80s, I had a teacher fail me on a programming assignment because I was using things she hadn't taught yet. This isn't a 'new' problem. It's difficult for teachers to stay on top of the required curriculum and still have time to be continually training.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Technology funding in school districts (in my area these are tax levies) is already insanely high; mostly because we're pushing for tablet devices in schools driven, behind the scenes, by extremely lucrative vendor deals.
Without adequate training, the related curricula are severely limited and thus the added benefits when compared to related cost are low, if at all positive.
Now, this research, as well as the districts, are rightly saying the teachers need more training in order to leverage the technology effectively; however, what really needs to be understood is just how much training is really necessary and whether the tech gap between teachers and their students can really be mitigated.
It is my unfounded opinion that it will never be mitigated enough as teachers are not usually well enough equipped at their own subject matter, let alone keeping up with the taxing knowledge demands of technology.
What we need to do is take a step back and ensure that these additional tax investments in technology are actually doing anything to further student development and because they aren't, think about what we can do to actually concentrate on doing that instead of buying the new and shiny and letting it, effectively, collect dust in the corner while levy after levy is passed to support it.
It's one thing for a teacher, like my computer science teacher in high school, to be expected to understand computer SCIENCE. It's another to expect them to know a bunch of software packages. That's one of the big problems with computer education in schools; the idiots putting together the curriculum don't understand the difference between conceptual learning and facility with using systems.
If the kids already know enough of the subject matter, that's a good indication that the class can be dropped, and replaced with something that they don't know much about.
Everyone talks about how today's young people are computer geniuses, but I'm a college physics professor, and I can tell you that kids coming up from high school are as clueless about tech as their grandparents. They just know how to Twitter and Instagram, but they have no idea how computers or the Internet work.
This isn't new, of course, nobody understands the technology their world is based on. My father and grandfather lived in an era where most people knew how a car worked and how to fix it, but in my generation that's a mystery. I understand how computers work and how to fix them, but the next generation treats them as black boxes. And so on.
I was misdiagnosed as a mentally retarded in the first grade due to an undiagnosed hearing problem in one ear. My teachers were routinely surprised when I blew out the annual evaluation exam on the genius side, calling it a stastical fluke. Nothing was more prized in the special ed classes than a well-behaved idiot who brings in 3X funding.
Last time I was in school, I had a better grasp of "modern technology" than most of my professors. This was in a computer science program. It's not a problem, because my CS professors didn't need to teach me how to use Facebook or make a slideshow shiny enough to woo investors. They still understood algorithms better than I did, and that was the knowledge they were passing on.
In today's shocking news story, we find that older people are familiar with an older generation of tools. For most "primary and secondary teachers", their job is to teach the basic skills and concepts that are elemental for the more advanced intellectual tasks encountered in a professional career. Sure, technology can assist in that endeavor, but it's not the whole solution. Teachers only need enough technology knowledge to use the technology needed for their classes. Anything more is gratuitous.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
That only works for the cases where the teachers are paid for that time in the summer.
Often, that is not the case, and instead they are working another job to replace the paycheck that stops coming during that period.
It's easy to blame the teachers for this, but I try not expect people to spend a quarter of the unpaid time I see teachers already spending doing class prep, let alone more.
(I'm sure that there are teachers that don't spend that time. I'm also sure that there are teachers, somewhere, that actually get paid for that time. But the ones I know personally already spend huge amounts of completely unpaid time on class prep, and often are just left out in the cold entirely during the summer unless they are teaching summer classes.)
My father and grandfather lived in an era where most people knew how a car worked and how to fix it, but in my generation that's a mystery.
I assure you that at no time in history did "most people" know how cars worked or how to fix them. Perhaps a higher percentage of the population than now but it never was "most". Not ever.
Most people have always been clueless to varying degrees about many technologies they depend on. Furthermore, while the basic principles of how cars work hasn't really changed much, there is a LOT more technology involved these days so there is much more to learn. I have owned cars where you could almost literally stand in the engine compartment with the engine still in the vehicle. You could do that because they were very simple compared to today's vehicles. Now you have to deal with a myriad of sensors, ECUs, emissions control equipment, electronics and other stuff that simply didn't even exist 40+ years ago. An engine compartment is packed very tightly now and there is a lot more to know about.
I understand how computers work and how to fix them, but the next generation treats them as black boxes.
No more than they ever did. However the same thing applies. When I was younger it was actually possible to have a fairly complete understanding of how the 8088 computer on your desk worked. The technology now is quite a bit more complex "under the hood" (so to speak) and it's a lot harder to understand more than basic principles. It can still be done but there is more to learn than there once was.
68% of primary and secondary teachers are concerned that their pupils have a better understanding of computing than they do. Moreover, the pupils reinforced this finding with 47% claiming that their teachers need more training...
Polls are great, but just imagine what it would be like if we lived in a world where there was actually a way to measure who knows what...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Then stop teaching.
Seriously, I work in schools - I'm an IT Manager for independent (private) schools. The good teachers are the ones that have knowledge to impart to the kids, the other type generally do not know anything until they have to teach it and then they learn it badly and, thus, teach it badly. Can you imagine being a science or maths teacher and never having done "chemical reactions" or "simultaneous equations"? Sure, there's always an answer that even the teacher won't know but it shouldn't be something so far out of your reach that you can't a) take an educated guess on the spot and b) come back the next day with the properly researched answer.
With the best IT teachers, I can discuss electronics, computer science and mathematics at a level where neither of us need explain ourselves. They've probably done my job in the past, for the most part, too. And, very deliberately, they will refer to themselves as IT teachers or CS teachers and not ICT teacher (which involves using a computer to do word processing, not anything the kids couldn't pick up on their own in ten minutes).
The last lot of students that went through the school I'm at were building drones running on Raspberry Pi's and .NET Gadgeteer, they were cobbling together Z80 and 6502 circuits in their lunch break, and they were programming in C#, C and assembler. Some of it wasn't stuff we'd done before, but we managed to teach them new stuff all the way through, based on extensive knowledge of the subject and actually SITTING AND LEARNING the stuff they wanted to learn in advance so they could be taught effectively. And, there, it's really more of a "I've never done C# but it's a programming language that I just need to learn the quirks and syntax of and all my old knowledge then comes back into play".
If you can't do this, as an IT teacher, then you probably should go back to school yourself. This is no more insulting than suggesting that a French teacher know French, or a Maths teacher know Maths.
If you're not the one teaching, why bother to have you there?
Yeah, they will be much better educated than you.
Ignorance is bliss.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/30/home-schooling-outstanding-results-national-tests/
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/09/study-of-the-day-home-schooled-children-score-higher-on-tests/245036/
The best teachers aren't afraid of students who know something they don't. Teaching teachers all the knowledge is impossible. Teaching teachers humility is possible, though seldom seen.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?