"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." After watching the videos and reading the articles about instructional design, I would probably have to agree with this quote. I didn't know that instructional design was so in depth.
After I graduated with my degree in elementary education I substituted for a year and a half, and shortly after the beginning of the second semester last year I was hired to teach third and fourth grade Reading for the remainder of the school year. My job only lasted for four months because the position was no longer available this year. I have to admit that when I made my lesson plans during that time, I did not think about all the parts there are to instructional design. I did put good thought into what I was doing but not to that extent.
In college, I was taught how to make lesson plans, stating the objective, anticipatory set, standards, benchmarks, indicators, etc. That was required for assignments, but the instructors said that probably wouldn't be required when we actually teach, but we needed to know how to do it. In fact, they said that it may not even be required to turn in lesson plans. They were right. I wonder if that is a contributing factor as to why teachers don't always focus on instructional design.
The models of instructional design, such as the Morrison, Ross, Kemp Model and the ADDIE Model, might be considered too limited or too broad for what the teachers are trying to do. That could be another reason as to why instructional design is not always used.
I agree that teacher training should focus on helping them become more comfortable with instructional design. The more comfortable they are with it, the better educator they will be, and the more students will learn.
I very much agree Tara, lesson plans now are a thing of the past and I really believe it affects our teachers focus. I was also taught lesson plans and that we may not use them, luckily I had a stern pricipal that I respected in the way of lesson plans, he may not have ever looked at them, but he told me his rules and expectations and I followed them and it really helped knowing what I was teaching, reading, evaluating each day to determine if I was effective for my students or not.
ReplyDeleteCraig
Tara and Craig,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the insight here since I am not a teacher. The honest reveiws of your work history and thoughts involving teaching and instructional design are valuable because it shows me the view from the teaching side.
Shaun