Free and self-paced online learning on edX helps educators put ambitious teaching and learning into practice to help spark global educational improvement.
Elizabeth Birr Moje, Dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan, says, “Improving literacy instruction requires more than just improving students’ ability to read and spell words.” She contends that to have a truly ambitious outlook on teaching and learning, you must address important 21st-century skills including flexible thinking and communicating and collaborating across cultures. Other important skills include solving problems and collaboration in order to achieve an end.
Underutilized current methods and tools may be the answer needed to improve global education. The course suggests higher order discussion and project-based learning are both well suited to developing ambitious literacy skills.
One issue among school leaders is the idea that some students of a lower socioeconomic background aren’t ready for ambitious or new teaching instruction. However, LATL helps identify ways teachers can implement these strategies even in large urban school districts.
Richard Leverett, Director of External Affairs for AT&T, spoke about the growing problem in schools when they are not implementing ambitious programs. “The consequences when the instruction is not ambitious is that you tend not to identify students with talent and not to push them beyond their limits.” Leverett thinks that technology might be the key to unlocking hidden potential in the classroom. “Unfortunately, especially in places where minorities live, resources are scarce,” he says, “so that’s why it’s important that the teachers that we do have, that are there, are often encouraging and often raising expectations.”
Ambitious literacy instruction should include addressing literacy in all its forms: reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and visually representing information and ideas effectively. Professor Nell Duke explains that there is “too little emphasis on writing and expectations for writing that are not high enough to really develop learners who are ready to be effective in the current environment in our society.” Nell contends that each of these areas of literacy is important to do well not only in school, but also at home and in the community. Teaching ambitiously is about more than worksheets or recalling questions; it’s really having students dig deep into text and applying it in some way to their own lives.
The course also focuses on ambitious instruction in math as well as using digital technology in the classroom for ambitious learning.
Find out more on how you can innovate your classroom with ambitious teaching and learning by taking the free edX course here.
Add new comment