thepeculiarsblog

We have been innocents in education till new knowledge, new methods of detecting and measuring phenomena and improved communication made us aware of more about education, so we are no longer innocents about the mistakes which we used to in education. There are seven areas of education where our innocence is being threatened: Individual differences in Learning, School Achievement and Its Effect on Personality, What can be Learned, Manifest and Latent Curriculum, Role of Testing, Education as Part of a Larger Social System. Students differ in the rate at which they can learn-not in the level to which they can achieve or in their basic capacity to learn. In addition, the term "individual differences" is the effect of particular school conditions rather than of basic differences in the capabilities of the students. Repeated success or failure in school over a number of years appears to increase the probability of the student's gaining a positive view of himself and high self-esteem or vice versa. Also the highest students in the inferior school have a more positive view of themselves than the lowest students in the superior school, even though the two groups of students have almost the same level of tested achievement. To conclude, it is the perception of how well one is doing relative to others in the same situation that appears to be a key link between school achievement and personality effects.
Individual differences in school achievement is affected by seven areas which are; Learning Unit, Laboratory and School Learning, Individual Variation, Achievement Variation in School Settings, Entry Behavior, Affective Entry Characteristics and Quality of Instruction. Availability to the learner of requisite entry behavior determines the extent to which a specific learning task can be learned. Affective entry characteristics determine the conditions under which the learner will engage in a learning task. The quality of instruction determines the efficiency with which a learner will accomplish a learning task.