Teachers changing their methods: allowing students to learn by doing

[Suradit69]

Confucius said it a long time ago "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand"

Which explains why most students enrolled in US graduate programs in science, engineering and math are foreign born and mainly come from Asian countries ... because the touchy-feely western approach to education is doing such a stellar job ... and Asian students must be doing it all wrong.

It will come as no surprise to observers of graduate education that the report documents the fact that foreign students make up the majority of enrollments in U.S. graduate programs in many STEM [science,tech,engineering,math] fields, accounting for 70.3 percent of all full-time graduate students in electrical engineering, 63.2 percent in computer science, 60.4 percent in industrial engineering, and more than 50 percent in chemical, materials and mechanical engineering ...

For example, there are 36 graduate programs in electrical engineering where the proportion of international students exceeds 80 percent, including seven where it exceeds 90%.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/12/new-report-shows-dependence-us-graduate-programs-foreign-students

[thhMan]

I have interviewed college graduate people applying for graphics and It jobs.

1 job applicant with an amazing resume, travelled all the way from Chiang Mai to our office in Pattaya for the job.

As he was supremely skilled (as per his resume), I asked him to replicate our logo (which was a curved line replicated 5 times and angled to create our logo)....

I thought he was joking when he showed me his attempt and I asked him if it looks like what I asked him to do...

He was there the whole day and started crying.....

So I showed him from scratch how its done and it took less than 5 minutes

The same issues with web building etc... College grads again applied and during the Interview, the results ended up shocking...

In the end, I had to employ the best of the worst.... Big mistake as nothing he did passed my scrutiny and even though I explained time and time again, that we design to be good on the eye, I still got the horrible shadows, square "click now buttons" and all the style that a noobie shows when they build their sites with flashing text and anim gifs....

I ended up having to reteach him everything... and a year and a half later, he finally gets it... and is now a valued member of the team, albeit with lost of books to read on his "learned at college" skills that he really never possessed, understood or applied.

[Harveyg]

Confucius said it a long time ago "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand"

Which explains why most students enrolled in US graduate programs in science, engineering and math are foreign born and mainly come from Asian countries ... because the touchy-feely western approach to education is doing such a stellar job ... and Asian students must be doing it all wrong.

It will come as no surprise to observers of graduate education that the report documents the fact that foreign students make up the majority of enrollments in U.S. graduate programs in many STEM [science,tech,engineering,math] fields, accounting for 70.3 percent of all full-time graduate students in electrical engineering, 63.2 percent in computer science, 60.4 percent in industrial engineering, and more than 50 percent in chemical, materials and mechanical engineering ...

For example, there are 36 graduate programs in electrical engineering where the proportion of international students exceeds 80 percent, including seven where it exceeds 90%.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/12/new-report-shows-dependence-us-graduate-programs-foreign-students

Well, first lets use a bit of logic, shall we? I believe you state that high percentages of USA grad schools in STEM subjects are foreign, maybe Asian. You use this to conclude that Asian Ed systems are superior to American ones bc they are not "touchy feely". Isn't it clear that there is no causal link whatsoever re pedagogy? How could you possibly deduce the reasons when so many variables are present?

For another view on what might be going on I just happened to ve searching for Steve Rasmussen, the founder of Key Curriculum, who I know personally from my days in California. If you know his work then you know he is no lightweight. I found a blog of his where he offers insights on his asian work travels(2007):

"Education in Asia is in tremendous flux, and as U.S. educators, we have a lot to learn and a lot to offer. In my view, three things distinguish education in Asia generally from education in the U.S., and these account for the disparate success we often hear about in contrasts between education there and here.

Asian nations give more material support to education relative to their national economies than does our nation.

The university examination system, maintained to regulate access to a very limited resource (i.e., university admission), drives students to study in their K-12 years.

Mathematics is viewed as the gatekeeper subject for admission into all scientific disciplines in school and at the university, and scientific careers are seen as the way to achieve economic success and employment after school."

So many there are other explanations?

[Harveyg]

One of the most positive threads I have ever read on TV (with only an absolute minimum of bashing).

I once had a Thai gf, a teacher with a Masters degree, and she would sometimes ask me for ideas about what to say in the little morning homily she and other teachers in turn had to give to the amassed students at flag-respecting time.

I just told her to try and get across the idea that you should keep asking questions, questions questions. Tell them that not all questions have answers. Or at least, not just ONE answer.

What IS the meaning of life? Ok, you are not going to produce little Bertrand Russells overnight, but what an amazing concept it is, here in LoS, to be introduced to the notion that there is MORE THAN ONE answer to any question outside mathematics (and perhaps even inside mathematics, I dunno).

Inside math as well. Sometimes multiple solution paths, sometimes different answers- depends on the openness of the question posed....

Correct, e.g. a rectangle has area 100 cm^2. Write down the lengths of the sides. Two numbers are subtracted and give the answer 5. Write down some numbers that would give this answer, etc. You will rarely encounter these kinds of questions in regular textbooks, either in Thai or Western books, though. This is where the creativity of the teacher comes in.

The previous poster offers an example of a question with multiple answers. For an example of one answer with multiple solution paths I offer:

Given a rectangular piece of material 16 x 20, I then wish to cut out squares from all 4 corners so that I can fold up the sides to make a topless box. What size squares do I cut out to maximize the volume of the box?

[SheungWan]

The situation in Thailand maybe appalling, but in many UK universities it is a common lament that student ability in both maths and written English is quite poor. eg ask the average UK undergraduate (of any year) to set up a spreadsheet commencing with a figure of 100 cumulatively increasing by 5% every month from January to December and see how far you/they get. Oh, and ask them do it in front of you with no consulting. Bottom line? Many/most students are graduating without the necessary skills to even use a spreadsheet and that isn't good. However, they can evaluate the relative merits of mobile phone company charges.

Edited April 21, 2015 by SheungWan

[TPI]

"Great news. Eventually the Thais will invent communicative language teaching and critical thinking."

That is like when a woman tells you that your are handsome for your age and weight.

Talk about a back handed comment.

What do you actually know about education or Thai education specifically?

Student centered learning is nothing new but it is very hard to correctly adapt to the classroom and curriculum. Communicative approach to language teaching is so last year. Get with it. Those that are proponents of Communicative approach are those without degrees in education or ability to do anything but speak in the target language. There are so many other skills in language development than just communicating. If all you are doing is relying on that, then you must realize that the students need other teachers helping them with the other language skills.

This article is about a lot more than that. This touches on the role of the teacher, the role of the student. Realizing that collectively your students know more than you do. It is very difficult to show the same results that a standardized test can, so administration tends to think of it is not as essential. This method of education is also very time consuming. Lecturing is the most efficient way to get information out, it also can be the least effective. Balancing your teaching style to combine, task based learning with lecture and rote memorization is probably the most effective.

I think your reply is both condescending and just plain bitchy.

There are professionally trained teachers from their own countries teaching English here, and to lump everyone into the one basket and say their opinion is not worth asking, is a bit much.

The great majority of Thai English students need basic communicative skills, as the current level of English is so poor. It's not bottom of the ASEAN ladder for nothing.

EFL teachers can do a lot to raise the level. They don't need to be some high falutin' academic to achieve this.

Thank you, you took the ink out of my pen! Obviously if you have a MA in education and English then I suppose you need to hang it on the line sometime, otherwise, all that time studying will have been a total waste of time and you would've ended up in Thailand! Right?

[maidee]

in about 100 years, they will implement what is going on in western countries right now

and call it an innovation

[Your Thainess]

Yeah...I don't have precise figures, but I seriously doubt that the majority of foreign teachers in Thailand are teaching in English Programs or at bilingual or international schools.

This article isn't about EFL teaching.

"There are professionally trained teachers from their own countries teaching English here"

Very few at that. Most either teach subject matter in EP, bilingual programs or teach at international schools.

My point is that EFL teachers only really know what is going on with a student from an English speaking perspective. They cannot really comment on the students' education as a whole because they are not involved with cross discipline teaching.

As this article is about Education as a whole and not EFL. You and the other poster seem to be sending this topic off course.

[Rhys]

So they actually attended one of the Thai TESOL conferences.

[Rhys]

Hmmm...maybe they were the few who actually attended Thai TESOL sessions, after welcome address.