"Dan Caster" wrote in message
m...
Well I have done some reading on eric.ed.gov and while I found studies
that supports class size as improving performance, I also found ones
that said there was no clear evidence that reducing class size
improved learning. This is especially true if one does not look at
studies that are only of the first two or three grades. I sometimes
do not communicate as well as I need to, but I hope I didn't say there
were no studies that supported class size reduction as improving
learning. I meant to say that there was no conclusive evidence etc.
If there were conclusive evidence there would not be so many studies.

Much of the improved leaning could be explained by the Western Wiring
Room experiment where light level was varied to find the optimum light
level for wiring telephone panels.

I do believe that class size is important in primary school and
becomes less important by the fifth grade. But generally primary
school have the same number of students in each grade and the same
teacher teaches all the subjects.

In high school each class is also pretty much the same size, but
students have different teachers for each subject.

In college the class sizes vary all over the place. And some classes
have lectures with several hundred students and then sections with
about fifteen to twenty students discussing the lecture.

I think that in high school lots of classes could be taught with all
student at a lecture and then sections with class participation.
Think how much a chemistry instructor would benefit if he or she did
not have to repeat the same lecture and demonstration four times in
order to teach four classes. As it is the teacher get bored going
over the same material.

But high school are pretty much built with all the class rooms the
same size, instead of with a mix of large lecture rooms and section
rooms.


Dan




"Ed Huntress" wrote in message news:8aL0c.20091

Well, yeah, there are a lot of issues. You had said that there were no
studies supporting the idea that reduced class size improves student
performance. That's all I was objecting to.



To me the Federal Government should be providing research on how the
education system can best be improved.

They do, Dan. Much of that research you'll find on ERIC is funded by the
feds. There is quite a lot known about what works, some of which can't
be
implemented because of costs or inertia, both political and
bureaucratic.


.

Ed Huntress

I hope without making a bigger deal of this, my experience is that lectures
are nothing but books-on-tape. If it can be delivered in a big lecture,
there is no excuse for delivering it in a classroom at all. If it requires
some visual aids, it could be done better on videotape. That isn't teaching.
That's presenting.

Which relates to the issue that we haven't discussed here, that a teacher
can get a student to perform closer to his or her ability by closer contact.
Any student will benefit from a teacher who can assess what a student is
learning as he goes, and by adjusting the teaching to suit the student's
learning. You can get away with larger classes when you don't expect much of
students, which, of course, is a big part of our problem.

Finally, I don't think you're making a fair evaluation of the data on
teaching and class size. Among people who are involved with the subject and
who have taken the time to really study the studies, there is no visible
disagreement. If you hold everything constant -- including low expectations
and a uniform method of presentation regardless of the class size --
probably you can show (probably someone *has* shown) that there is no
difference in student performance. But every good teacher knows he or she is
limited in how much they can teach by the amount of feedback, and the amount
of individual tailoring, they can do with each student. In fact, the issue
is a no-brainer to educators. The studies are things they regard as
political window-dressing for a fact that's established deeply in the
history of education, as well as by current events.

Ed Huntress