Educational
Trends
Description
According
to a Macroscopic View of Education, there
are three types of trends in education: Incremental,
stationary and iterative. There is a widening
gap between incremental trends and stationary
trends.
Incremental
trends (dramatic change trends) include
information, media and population.
1)
Information comes from TV, magazines, signs,
the Internet and human conversation.
2)
Media - changes in primary medium for learning
and teaching has been shifting over the
centuries. Socrates (verbal interaction
through questioining) to oral tradition
until the 15th century to printed word (books,
newspapers, etc.) to hypermedia.
3)
Population - Increase in population and
life expectancy has resulted in more students
to teach (emergency teacher certifications
and unqualified substitutes) and more diversity
(socioemotional, physical and cultural)
within the classroom. Leads to Fan-spread
effect.
Stationary
trends include mental hardware (brain)
and mental software (mental processes). Brain
has not changed and neither have mental software.
Lack of mental storage for today's increasing
amount of information - no means to increase
memory.
Iterative
Trends are those that keep reappearing.
They are the recycling of educational programs
and reforms, and stem from an oversimplification
of complex issues. They result from:
1) Differences between educational expectations
and aspirations of everyday practice.
2) Opposing forces of incremental and stationary
trends that cause reformers to revert back
to variations of familiar practice ("Doing
what we know")
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