IPI (Individually Prescribed Instruction) Mathematics was to imporve pupils mathematics through self discovery, but after a few years of working in the system, it was found to be more detrimental than helpful. S.H. Erlwanger did a study on a students named Benny. Benny was at the top of his class and had been doing IPI for 4 years. As Erlwanger asked Benny about his understanding of factions and decimals, he found Benny had made his own rules for how they work. Benny, for years had been given worksheets with examples, working on them by hisself, and that was his only form or instruction. He worked at his own pace and took a test at the end of each section when he was ready. He had little teacher involvement, only enough to help him when he needed it. Through this, he made up rules that got him correct answers most of the time, but unfortunately he never was told precisly why he got anwswers wrong. So Benny only assumed that his awswers were right because there are many ways to write an anwer, and he simply just didn't put the right one. Since this had gone on for four years, Erlwanger tried to help Benny learn fractions and decimals correctly, but damage had been done. Benny still had problems removing the rules he had already formed. Thus, IPI did more to detriment Benny's learning than to help.
The reason Benny never correctly learned the properties of factions and decimals is because he could never connect them to eachother or to prior knowledge. This could be viewed as Benny recieving a bunch of information with no connection between them, so he tries to make his own connections. This is one thing, for teachers today that must avoided. Teachers need to facilitate learning for their students so they can learn and undestand the connections between information given. For instance, factions and decimals have a particular relation. They represent the same number in different forms. Benny never picked up on this relationship because, as Erlwanger's study suggests, the instruction Benny received emphasized getting the right answer and not the process involved. He made connections he did, so he could get correct answer. If teachers focus on helping students understand the process by which they get correct answers, then students would be able to build on prior knowledge and obtain new knowledge by making proper connections.
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What I really like about your Paragraph 1 is the rich description of the instruction that Benny received. You do a very nice job of describing the conditions under which Benny was learning. Someone who hasn't read the paper could easily understand why Benny was struggling. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteAny chance I could get you to start proofreading your blog entries? There are so many typos and grammatical errors in this entry that wouldn't be there if you had carefully proofread what you wrote. You have good things to say, but all of the errors undermine your message.
All of the things you said in your second paragraph were very good. I feel like both Benny's personal understanding and the lack of a teacher were very important to the article overall. I was a little confused though because you don't really have a topic sentence and I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking for when I was reading it.
ReplyDeleteI thought you did a really good job of describing the education that Benny got. It was very clear what happened. I wonder if the topic sentence could be a little bit more clear.
ReplyDeleteI like how you talked about Benny not being taught relationships between diffenent math concepts. He made up his own rules. I pretty much only liked your post. I your content is really good.
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