CHAPTER 7

IMPLEMENTING INSTRUCTION

PROBLEM SCENARIO

Mr. Vallano has just administered the

midterm examination in his college prep

math course and is very surprised and

disappointed in the fact that his students

have done so poorly. Although this is the first

time he has formally assessed his students

this semester, prior to the exam he was

confident that most of them were learning

the

skills he wanted them to acquire. Indeed,

whenever he had asked them questions in

class, at least a few of his students were able

to come up with the right answers. Moreover,

most of the homework assignments the

students had handed in contained very few

errors. Yet, many of the students performed

very poorly on the exam;

in fact, quite a few of them were unable to

answer the questions covering the basic

skills Mr. Vallano had taught at the beginning

of the semester. Now Mr. Vallano wonders

what went wrong. Could he have

implemented his instruction in a manner that

would have enabled him to spot and correct

these problems sooner?

The Problem Scenario is an example of a

Traditional Approach to Instruction and is

shown in Figure 1.

The teacher presents a unit of instruction to

the entire class and moves on to the next

unit, where the cycle is repeated.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

A. Traditional Approach to Instruction – it has been labelled group instruction

Figure 1

Present a unit of instruction

Assess all the students

Present a unit of instruction

Assess all the students

RESULT

A few students do very well;

A few do very poorly; and

Most of them end up somewhere in the

middle.

B. Individualized Instruction

In recent years various attempts have

been

made to tailor instruction to the individual

abilities

of students. Most of these efforts have resulted

in

instruction called individualized instruction.

DIFFERENT WAYS TO INDIVIDUALIZE INSTRUCTION

Allow each students to proceed at their own

pace.

Provide different instructional materials for

different students.

Allowing students to work on different

objectives.

RESULT Serious classroom management problems.

Students have the strong desire to work together, whether it

is in a small group or in a large group under the direction of

a teacher.

SOLUTION

Alternative approaches have been proposed, one of the

best known of these is the Mastery Learning Approach.

CHAPTER OBJECTIVE

At the end of the discussion:

Students will be able to describe how to

employ a mastery learning approach in a

given learning situation.

MASTERY LEARNING APPROACH

The Mastery Learning is based on the

philosophy that all children can become

achievers if taught at a level of their own

proficiency, and encouraged to progress at a

rate of their ability to master clearly defined

units of learning. Mastery learning proposes

that all children can learn when provided

with the appropriate learning conditions in

the classroom.

Example of a Mastery Learning Approach

Yes

No

Unit 1 Formative Assess-

ment

Did student

s achieve mastery

?

Enrichment Activities

Remedial Class

Formative Assessment

Unit 2

The Mastery Learning Approach

It is an instructional philosophy based on the

idea of giving students more than one chance

to demonstrate mastery of content and skills.

In a Mastery Learning classroom, as in a

traditional classroom, students receive

instruction on a topic and then take a test to

determine their level of understanding. But

that's where the similarity ends.

In a Mastery Learning classroom, the teacher

scores that assessment and determines who

has mastered the content and who needs

more help. Students who have mastered the

material are given "enrichment"

opportunities, while those who have not

mastered it receive additional instruction on

the topic.

After a day or two, a retest is administered to

the group who did not demonstrate mastery.

Most of the students who didn't master it the

first time are able to achieve mastery on the

second test. The teacher then proceeds to

present the next unit of instruction to the

entire class , and the same cycle of activities

begins.

Every time you begin a new unit of

instruction, you can feel confident that your

students have mastered the concepts

needed to embark on new learning.

BENJAMIN BLOOM

Mastery learning, as a theoretical approach,

goes back to the work of Benjamin Bloom in

1968, who came up with the “Learning for

Mastery” (LFM) method. Bloom was

interested in how he could improve

traditional classroom instruction by

examining what it was about individual

tutoring that made it an effective

instructional approach.

SUMMARY- MASTERY LEARNING:

Provides a model of instruction that is effective for a wide range of students;

Reduces the academic spread between the slower and faster students without slowing down the faster students;

The skills and concepts have been internalized and put to use in other areas of the curriculum;

It is an alternative to the unsuccessful traditional methods of teaching and learning.

SUMMARY

Mastery learning is not a new method

of instruction. It is based on the concept that

all students can learn when provided with

conditions appropriate to their situation.

Although, Mastery learning will not

solve all the complex problems facing

educators.

Nevertheless, careful attention to the

elements of mastery learning allows

educators at all levels to make great strides

in their efforts to reduce the variation in

student achievement, close achievement

gaps, and help all children to learn

excellently.

“What is important is that all students

can

learn and grow, and no one is left

behind.”