On my soapbox

So, there are about a handful of things that I have very strong beliefs/opinions/convictions about:

1. I don't believe in prescribed gender roles and yes, I am a post-modern feminist.
2. I believe with all my heart that grace knows no gender and that women are as fully capable, gifted, and Spirit-filled as men to serve in any church ministry, including ordained ministry.
3. Having met Christ while in public school, I am a firm believer in having Christians in public schools.
4. As an educator, I take a constructivist approach to learning and teaching, as opposed to direct instruction.
5. For many, many reasons, I am pro-choice.

And tonight I would like to jump onto soapbox #4:

I can't stand direct instruction, and honestly, I am trying to figure out why it is still being used in so many schools today, namely Christian schools.

My Elem Math Methods professor assigned us some articles to read that covered direct instruction vs. a constructivist approach to teaching and learning. They both covered a lot of research, which was good, but I will spare you all from that right now. We did, however, discuss the A Beka program at great length. (for those of you who don't know, the A Beka program is a Christian curriculum that is used in many conservative Christian schools and it can also be used for homeschooling.) And basically, this program is entirely direct instruction. Direct instruction = all of the teacher's lesson plans are completely pre-planned out, and in many cases, even scripted out. Direct instruction also involves many worksheet-oriented lessons - for instance, my friend Candice is interning at a Christian school where they use A Beka, so for science, the students read the text and complete a worksheet. That's it - no hands-on learning, no inquiry-based approach to teaching science, no doing science, just reading about science. And the same for math. And language arts.

The A Beka program - and so many others like it - does not call students to higher levels of thinking (hello, Bloom's Taxonomy!). Math is not problem based and centered around problem-solving. Science is not inquiry-based, with students actually doing and experiencing science. Research has shown over and over again that students learn by doing, so why aren't more educators teaching by having their students doing? Science should include student-lead investigations that allow students to use hands-on approaches to learn from experiences and make connections to the real world.

I could also go on and on regarding what I believe surrounding having an entirely "Christian curriculum", but I'll stop for the night.

I have lesson plans to write...