Mr. Pullen wonders if smaller class sizes lead to greater student achievement as his superintendent decides the research suggests it doesn’t.
It makes sense that if a teacher lectures all day that it’s not going to make a big difference whether the teacher has 20 students, 24, or 32. However, if a teacher meets with small groups, has student conferences, and individually supports groups then having a few less students can make a difference.
Perhaps a lot of research on smaller class sizes is inaccurate because teachers might have smaller class sizes without changing the way they teach. I don’t think that smaller class sizes in themselves necessarily make for better teaching, they just make life easier for a teacher.
What research have you encountered on the subject?
Yeah. It makes sense the more we try to respond to individual student needs, the more of us there needs to be. The need to do so can come from a couple of directions – our own beliefs about what should happen, administrative or policy directives, student or parent demands, behavior management….age of students, the actual numbers in question, and how achievement is defined.
Lots of things need to be considered because reducing the pupil/teacher ratio is expensive.
Thanks Doug for your comment. In California, we have a 20 to 1 ratio in grades K-3 but it’s coming under the chopping block as times are financial times are tough here and property values are on their way down.
We’ve already got the smaller class sizes. It’s like we’ve got to start earning them. However, the powers that be do want to keep them in Los Angeles if at all possible.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Class size doesn’t matter if we don’t change the way we’re teaching.
Kia Ora Matt.
I wonder at the factors that permit learning to happen simply because often, and without any real conscious effort, learning just happens. What are the motivations or rewards in a young child who simply learns things in much the same way as a vacuum cleaner picks up dust?
Our Science experts tell us that the human brain has not undergone any substantial development over the last 20 thousand years. They say that if a cave child was raised from a new-born today, we could not find any essential difference between the mental capabilities of that child and any child living in the 21st century. If this is so, and let’s assume that it is, what motivated the primitive beings to learn the necessary skills and knowledge other than simply a drive to survive?
In that primitive families were probably no bigger than average families today, one could be forgiven for thinking that learning was an inbuilt human survival attribute and this feature would have evolved in the environments that were prevalent at the time. I think it would be extremely doubtful if learning environments would have been such that one experienced adult mentor would have motivated and tutored a group of 30 or more young learners.
Surely it would be more likely that one to one or small group learning would have been the order of the day. And this environment would have been one where, through many hundreds of generations, the necessary learning attributes would have evolved.
My hunch is that we are not best suited to learn in large groups, but the unique feature of humans to adapt has allowed some of us to learn reasonably effectively despite learning environments where the teacher to student ratio is what it is today.
Ka kite
from Middle-earth