Standardized Teaching

One of the reasons there are so many different educational approaches, (and so many accompanying theories) is the variation in student populations worldwide.

Combine that with wildly varying environments, even within a city, or between urban and rural areas, and one concludes different approaches are a necessity.

Yet, education is resource-intensive…it can be too expensive to do things the optimal way. For example, public schools often have high student-to-teacher ratios despite the belief that as class size goes up, more students fail. The explanation we are given is that there’s simply not enough funding to pay for more teachers.

This is where scaling up learning tools comes into play, such as online coursework developed for one size fits all. Or put another way, standardized teaching and learning becomes a goal because it can save funds.

Today in a blended learning environment, it’s not necessarily obvious what can be scaled up to save funds, and what really should be focused narrowly on a local population, such as we find in “community schools”, and some charter schools.

Here’s an article about how standardization is impacting education in Kenya. Kudos to Gary for the link.