Tuesday 1 November 2011

Mastery Learning





One of a number of strategies designed to provide the equivalent of individualized instruction in a conventional classroom setting. Designed to help students achieve a predetermined level of competence, mastery learning is based on the concept that every student is capable of learning basic skills and acquiring the requisite knowledge if the curriculum and instruction are appropriately designed. The mastery learning model is a sixpart, individualized program consisting of: learning objectives; preassessment of the student’s current skills and knowledge; instruction (adapted to the objectives and the learner’s case history); diagnostic assessment (testing, etc.); prescription of new or changed instructional methods; and postassessment, to see whether the student has achieved the original learning objectives. Although widely accepted as a valuable and fundamental approach to teaching, mastery learning has had mixed practical results.
On the positive side, it has formed the basis for much of the computer-based, PROGRAMMED INSTRUCTION that is widely used in American elementary and secondary schools and even in colleges. In the classroom, however, mastery
learning has often proved difficult for many teachers to implement, despite overwhelming evidence in studies by BENJAMIN BLOOM and other researchers that almost all children can indeed learn if they are given enough time,
opportunities and resources. One of the originators of mastery learning, Bloom found that 80% of students who were provided with oneon- one teaching achieved results normally reached by only 20% of students in conventional classrooms. Although one-on-one tutoring is both impractical and too costly for most schools, mastery learning was designed to provide each student with an individualized program that has some of the effects of one-on-one teaching, because its goals, pace and methods of instruction are adapted to individual needs.
Unfortunately, many teachers fail to administer mastery learning techniques to each student with equal enthusiasm. Many teachers simply do not believe all children can learn; others believe that children who do poorly are themselves to blame for their failures—because they are either incapable, lazy or rebellious. Even teachers who believe all children can
learn have trouble implementing mastery learning in the typical school setting, where conventionality, regularity, fixed curricula and adherence to strict time schedules make it virtually impossible for teachers to let students be both different and conventional at the same time. Conventional schools thus tend both to discourage the very individuality that mastery learning requires and to reinforce teacher perceptions that learning patterns of individual children are relatively unchangeable. As a result the relative performance of students in any given class rarely changes. The best students at the start of the year usually remain so at the end of the year, and the poorest students usually remain at the bottom of the class.
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