"Education has missed the boat, with respect to instructional design. Teachers come up with lesson plans on the fly, with little thought to why they are presenting information or even who their audience is. Teacher training, at the university level and during Professional development, needs to focus on helping teachers become comfortable with instructional design principles."
Teachers come up with a lot of things on the fly, but it's because something comes up and they have to. I do think that teachers tend to go with lesson plans from last year and forget to make revision if the lesson went well. In college during my undergrad, I had to write out these lesson plans that were two pages long for one activity to make sure I got every part of instructional design covered - I had to put who my audience was, what special needs their were, how I was going to keep them engaged, design assessments to make sure the objective was taught, etc. Once I became a teacher, I tried to do that, but it takes forever! Also, the basals that we use have most of those components in them and it's easy to simply rely on that and add supplemental activities only when time allows (which, let's face it, is hardly ever!) As a grade level, we do look at our students, their needs, and our objectives. I do try to tweak lessons to fit my class, but I could do more. That is why I am still learning and working on it!
I feel similar in that when I was an undergrad it would take me a week to correctly create a lesson plan that would cover one day of one of the three preps I teach. That's not very realistic to keep up with. I admit that I am doing the best that I can, but sometimes I do wish I could do a better job.
ReplyDeleteOh the lesson plans for undergrad...I remember those! I don't know about you or not but the only time I have to write out plans like that was for observations. My lesson plans are for me so I create them in a way that helps me remember all of the steps that I need to do to make sure my students are learning the material. Like you said, some teachers don't make those changes for the next year if they copy plans. I do make sure I jot a note down if something would've been better or needed to be removed.
ReplyDeleteI remember those lesson plans too! Going over every little step, spending so much time on one lesson. That's just not very realistic when you are teaching every subject everyday. There is not enough time in the day. I also will make notes to myself about what to do differently the next year.
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