Pearson's Bizarre take on "Efficacy in Education"

Efficacy: The True Measure of Success in Education

EdSurge, Sabrina Manville (Director of Efficacy in the Office of the Chief Education Advisor at Pearson Education) March 24,2015

https://www.edsurge.com/n/2015-03-24-efficacy-the-true-measure-of-success-in-education

Key Points:

• What is most striking is the surprising definitions for “efficacy,” “measure,” “success,” and “Education”

• Given the title, I anticipated:
• An article that would discuss a “soft focus” on how Pearson believes it is important to focus on student’s retention, application and implementation of what they learn in school. [which just so happens to be made possible by Pearson Products ;)  ]
• BUT the article instead defines efficacy as a measure of Pearson's market penetration. Success as revenue growth, Measure as profitability, and Education as a market.  The author initially refutes these foci, but ironically focuses on them for the duration of the article. The strategy rang particularly loud in my ears having spent the last few years as a sales rep for an auto parts company with a “solution” for every aspect of auto repair.  

• A telling quotation “Tests and textbooks are just a small slice of the money spent on education globally; money spent on teaching, learning, and related services are a much larger and growing share.”

Intended Audience:

• The Author is addressing people working in the “Business of Education,” this should be differentiated from people who educate.  The source, Edsurge, portrays itself as an independent source for Ed-Tech news and is intended for educators.

Relevance:

• To be blunt, I have read similar trade articles announcing new automobile brake pads, ---“eco-friendly composition,” ---“protect your family,”---- this is a piece on value-added sales.  It is not evidence that all corporate interests are evil, just that their interest in schooling is much different than committed educators.  
• Given the bizarrely mismatched definitions of “Efficacy, Success, and Education,” it should be a red flag on the appropriateness of Corporate expansion into their target market of “teaching, learning, and related services…”

Life Equations

Lisa Heitin
Life Equations: Renowned educator Dan Meyers encourages teachers to drop the textbooks and teach students math that's all around them.
Published Online: April 4, 2011
Education Week Teacher pd Sourcebook
Complete URL: http://www.edweek.org/tsb/articles/2011/04/04/02meyer.h04.html?cmp=ENL-TU-NEWS1

Dan Meyers tried teaching math according to the textbook and found it "disastrous". He began to recognize "a fundamental difference between the way the textbook presented a problem and the way he might solve a problem in his own life." He compares it to film - and does it much better then I could.

“The first act is punchy,” he explains. “You can summarize the premise of every blockbuster movie in a sentence. ‘Shark terrorizes seaside town,’ that sort of thing.” In a math problem, the premise is a question, such as, “How long will it take me to get to Los Angeles?”

During what he calls the “second act” of a film, the characters encounter obstacles and find out what they need to do. In a math problem, the second act involves measuring, determining a formula, or finding out what information is missing.

In the conclusion of a film, the plot reaches a climax and the conflict is resolved. The same goes for a math problem. And in both film and a problem, there’s also a chance to set up a sequel, or extensions, he explains."

The intended audience for this article is practitioners. It is relevant to teachers of all subjects and levels. He does an excellent job of contextualizing.

I also included his video! Enjoy!

Bring Back Textbooks

Jay Mathews
"Bring back textbooks"Washington Post
March 15, 2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/bring_back_textbooks/2011/03/15/ABr153Z_blog.html?wprss=rss_education

Topic: Textbooks and their use

We have heard a lot about how useless textbooks are and not much about their usefulness. Here is an article which makes the case for textbooks.

Key Points: Textbooks may be bland and written to support a certain point of view however, the point of this article is that students benefit from working through this unique type of text.

Relevance: Textbooks are one tool of the educational trade. How and when they should be used is something that is important to consider.