As I was searching for an article to support my rant this week I came across something better 🙂 Thomas Guskey writes about the concept of mastery learning as one of the most powerful strategies in education. It struck me; during the 11 goals meetings I had this week we talked about the ongoing work we are doing within our departments to develop plans for improvement. Last week as we sat with the curriculum leaders to discuss the English department improvement plan someone asked a question about what learning strategies we intended to implement to reach the goals outlined. This question is imperative to these conversations and I would suggest that the answer is even more important. So what place does “mastery learning” have in that process? Is it a viable approach to use at SCIS? Or perhaps more poignantly, why wouldn’t we use “mastery learning” as a strategy in our classrooms? I agree with Bloom and his beliefs that all students can achieve success at high levels under the right circumstances…how close can we come to creating that environment in our classrooms? I think we can reach this level and we should strive to find a path to do so in our department improvement plans…why not include “mastery learning”?!?! Those are a few of my thoughts…I’d love to hear your two cents!!!
This article summary is from the Marshall Memo, an awesome professional resource!!
Originally published in SCIS MS Headlines on October 11, 2013.
Pushing Forward 