Class size.

youtube!

Dont know if this is the right forum so moderator feel free to move.

Anyway I was just wondering about peoples views on Pupil-teacher Ratio and does it really have as devastating an effect on a child's educational development
as many claim.

I have seen some examples of educational methods in other countries,particularly far eastern such as Singapore Sth Korea and Malaysia as well as others.

They have a method where by the teacher who could be in charge of anywhere up to 80 pupils, proceeds to introduce a maths problem for example to the entire class.

The method is simply that there will always be a certain percentage of students who will cop on to the lesson as such.

What then happens is that those students who have grasped the concept stand up and teach another group of students who have perhaps almost but not completely managed to.

When this second group of students learn from the first group they then proceed to teach the slower kids and so on until everybody learns.

All the time the teacher is proceeding to prepare the next lesson.

I don't know about anyone here but in my opinion this seems like an excellent model of education where everybody gets involved and the teacher has more time on their hands.

Also as an aside I have to say that I myself was in a class of between 46-50 children and I dont think it done me any harm,though obviously the model outlined above would have been of benefit to the slower kids.

The reason I have posted this in the Irish economy forum is simply because teachers always seem to raise this as a huge insurmountable problem that will lead to terrible education standards.

I know of course this is not the fault of the teacher,they don't set the methods of teaching,but surely if we were to adopt a more modern system then that particular argument would be pointless.

Less teachers,not more. Bigger class sizes as are necessary in more populated regions, newer proven methods that work means everyone is a winner.

The bill for education falls and we dont have to listen to the same old tired argument that there are too many children in classrooms and not enough teachers.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Tigerandahalf

So what happens when the kids start teaching something the wrong way???????
Does the teacher have to go back and re-teach it all? Why should the able kids have to teach the others? Because people don't want to pay to have an appropriate amount of teachers.

Tigerandahalf

A lot of people are anti-teacher yet they have v little to back it all up. Of course class size is important. The bigger the class the more likely you are to have a special needs child, a disruptive child and children with learning needs. This all puts pressure on the teacher to cater to every child's needs.

youtube!

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

So what happens when the kids start teaching something the wrong way???????
Does the teacher have to go back and re-teach it all? Why should the able kids have to teach the others? Because people don't want to pay to have an appropriate amount of teachers.

Obviously there are fail-safes embedded within the system, if the children start to teach in the wrong way it will be picked up.

The other obvious counter-claim to your argument seems to be that the overall standard of academic qualification in the aforementioned countries is a lot higher than we have in our own fair isle.

byhookorbycrook

The Irish curriculum does not lend itself to such an approach, thankfully. We use peer tutoring in literacy and numeracy, but with two teachers per 30 (class teacher and learning support.)It is not feasible to have a class of 80.

Tigerandahalf

youtube! wrote: »

Obviously there are fail-safes embedded within the system, if the children start to teach in the wrong way it will be picked up.

Ah...the fail-safe system is the teacher who has to pick up the mess.

Cork boy 55

I agree with the OP class size is not the main issue
although it does helps. Wheter there is 28 or 32 in a class does not really matter other factors are more important.

I have not taught but I have been involved in training and instructing.
in a number of areas.

There are several factors at play.

discipline of the pupils and the system of discipline of teh school is critical as well. Does not matter how good or bad the teacher if they cannot
maintain discipline due to a bad system or bad culture of the pupils attending.
As well as bad undisplined pubils the other major issues or slow/special needs kids and kids that cannot speak english slowing things down.

youtube!

Tigerandahalf wrote: »

Ah...the fail-safe system is the teacher who has to pick up the mess.

Well is seems to work very well in these more advanced educational countries.

Obviously if a particular student is teaching the problem incorrectly, then his/her peers will pick it up.

No system is perfect,and dont get me wrong I am not having a go at the teachers,its the outdated modes of teaching in themselves that are at fault.

Cork boy 55

youtube! wrote: »

Well is seems to work very well in these more advanced educational countries.

Obviously if a particular student is teaching the problem incorrectly, then his/her peers will pick it up.

No system is perfect,and dont get me wrong I am not having a go at the teachers,its the outdated modes of teaching in themselves that are at fault.

Pupils in the far-east are a different race and culture to here
What works there might not here.

Tigerandahalf

I think you will find that those methods are outdated. We had them in Britain and Ireland about 150 years ago where a teacher taught a huge class. If you google this you will find exactly what you are talking about.

I think the modern curriculum in Ireland has gone too far. It is a curriculum that is suited to having a max class of 20/25 pupils with none of them being badly behaved or having special needs. The old system had a lot of strong points. Teachers concentrated on the basics of literacy and numeracy. The curriculum today has gone away from this where kids are learning in groups, discussing things together, working on projects together with less emphasis on the teacher filling them with knowledge. However, for it to succeed you need motivated and well behaved pupils. It has put greater pressure on teachers as pupils are moving around the classroom and it's a lot harder to maintain discipline and safety when pupils can do that. If the P/T ratio increases we will have to go back to the old system.

youtube!

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

Pupils in the far-east are a different race and culture to here
What works there might not here.

Sadly you are likely correct in that assumption, however I still feel that small trials of these methods in certain classes may be of some benefit. It would not happen overnight,more of an evolutionary process.

I agree wholeheartedly with the moderator here however, the whole union dues argument is very pertinent and self serving and because of this barrier amongst others I don't ever see it happening here.

seavill

youtube! wrote: »

Obviously there are fail-safes embedded within the system, if the children start to teach in the wrong way it will be picked up.

The other obvious counter-claim to your argument seems to be that the overall standard of academic qualification in the aforementioned countries is a lot higher than we have in our own fair isle.

Such as?

Not being argumentative but I fail to see how for example if half the class get it and the other half does not that is 40 teaching 40. How does the teacher keep an eye on 40 different teaching methods at the same time.

I would presume that they are somehow tested on what has been taught. If this is the case then they spot who has not been taught it correctly. Surely the last 20 minutes of pupil pupil teaching has been a complete waste of time and the teacher still has to go back and teach to a particular small group?

Also is this a new method used in these areas or is it a method that has been used for years?

Also what is the behavior of the pupils like over there? Do they all sit quietly and listen or what? I have seen videos of schools in some countries like that where the students sit and listen to the teacher without making a sound out of pure fear.

"Many schools in Singapore and Malaysia use caning (for boys) as a routine official punishment for misconduct,....."

Toby Take a Bow

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

No strong correlation? And that's all of them? I always thought that in research you would rarely find something which has been argued over for so long to have such a strong unified position.

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

What some call transparent, others call conspiracy thinking.

southsiderosie

In recent years, Finland has outperformed both Singapore and South Korea. The Atlantic did a follow-up to a longer piece on this a few months ago, but here are some highlights:

Teacher training matters...

For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.

...but the most important driving operating principle of the system is equality.

Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.

Finland's relative homogeneity does not explain this difference - educational policy does.

Samuel Abrams, a visiting scholar at Columbia University's Teachers College, has addressed the effects of size and homogeneity on a nation's education performance by comparing Finland with another Nordic country: Norway. Like Finland, Norway is small and not especially diverse overall, but unlike Finland it has taken an approach to education that is more American than Finnish. The result? Mediocre performance in the PISA survey. Educational policy, Abrams suggests, is probably more important to the success of a country's school system than the nation's size or ethnic makeup.

Also a 2008 French study noted that teacher training in the subject matter could actually make up for lack of training in teaching practices. However, the same study suggests that class size has a positive effect on student outcomes, and the effect was particularly strong for initially low-achieving classes - these children benefit less from teacher training. So I think the takeaway from both the Finnish and the French cases may be that teacher training, especially in math and science, is paramount, but that school systems should make lower student-teacher ratios for low-performing students a priority.

deise go deo

I think it needs to be pointed out that Ireland does not have the infastructure for class sizes of much more than 30, school buildings were built with classes of about 24-28 students in mind, OP have you considered that large class sizes in far eastern countries are out of necessity rather than because they are educationally desirable?
They may out preform us, but I think its a heck of a jump to assume large class size is the reason for this.

Chuck Stone

youtube! wrote: »

What then happens is that those students who have grasped the concept stand up and teach another group of students who have perhaps almost but not completely managed to.

Very interesting.

It sounds as if that method of teaching is informed by the work of Russian developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky.

Vygotsky perceived the child as a social being who is able to appropriate new patterns of thinking when learning alongside a more competent individual. He called this concept, the Zone of Proximal Development. This is the expanse between the child’s level of development and their potential development level, in collaboration withmore competent individuals. Social interaction, therefore, supports the child’s cognitive development in the ZPD, leading to a higher level of reasoning.

Link

I'd imagine this type of teaching would be more amenable to cultures that would value social cohesion such as East Asian cultures which might help explains the success of large class sizes.