TEACHERS LEARN OF MASTERY LEARNING

Thomas Guskey, an energetic professor of education at the University of Kentucky, told more than 100 teachers of the Cape Girardeau School District Tuesday that every child has the potential to learn; it is up to them to tap into it.

Guskey has written a book, "Implementing Mastery Learning," which addresses and outlines a highly effective teaching technique used by very few teachers.

Guskey said most teachers break their classes into units, teach the unit, test on the unit, record the grades and move on.

In mastery learning, Guskey proposes that teachers teach a unit, test on it, reteach the unit in a new, formative manner, and then retest the unit.

"One of the concerns which teachers have expressed to me is that they don't think it's fair it gives students a second chance to get an `A' or `B', which other students got the first time," Guskey said.

"Let me ask you this: How many of you failed your driver's license test the first time you took it? Should we punish you by not letting you drive in the rain? Should your driver's license be worth less than those who passed the test the first time? No. Absolutely not."

At the start of his speech, Guskey showed the teachers his viewpoint of systematic change. The overhead he displayed was of a man pushing an elephant from behind. The man symbolized a staff developer; the elephant the organization.

"Not only do you have to be careful of where you push, but you also have to be watching where you step," he said.

Guskey outlined the four basic concepts of outcome-based education:

It is not new. It involves two basic objectives: teachers must decide what they want the students to learn, and decide what evidence they desire to verify that the student has learned that information. This concept was developed by Ralph Tyler in 1949, and serves as the foundation for mastery learning.

The ideas of outcome-based education are more important than the vocabulary. "You can lose track of important ideas by placing restrictive titles on them," he said."

Good ideas can be implemented poorly. "Some of the best ideas fail miserably if they are poorly implemented," Guskey said.

Success in improvement hinges on the smallest unit of the organization the classroom.

"You must start out with the notion that every student has the ability to learn," Guskey said. "What you must do is identify the problems and determine the most effective way to reach the students."

Two problems most mentioned by teachers were lack of motivation among students and learning differences within a group. Both problems, Guskey said, can be resolved through the implementation of a mastery learning curriculum.

The two basics of mastery learning are tutoring instructional techniques and learning strategies of successful students.

"Each teacher must make a formative assessment: the teacher must determine what the student is expected to learn, what each student has learned well, and what the student needs to learn better," he said. "Information alone is insufficient unless a student can pair that information with a way to use it."

The mastery learning system entails teaching the students a body of information and then testing on it.

"Then you must use corrective measures to re-teach the information to those who did not understand the first time," Guskey said. "It's exactly what the best students have done for themselves all along."

After the information is re-taught, it is tested once again and the class moves on. Studies show that students learn and retain up to 80 percent more of the information in the long run, as compared to conventional methods of teaching.

Guskey said that the two essential parts in his theory of implementing mastery learning is the feedback-corrective-enhancement process and to have congruence among instructional components.

"Teachers need to test what they teach," he said. "If it is important enough to test the material, it ought to be important enough to teach it.

"This process is flexible," he stressed. "What goes on in one classroom could be entirely different from what goes on in another. But the one thing they will have in common is that the kids are really learning the material."