Educational theorists who have influenced my teaching
Dr. Brian Cambourne
Since 1980 Dr. Brian Cambourne has been researching how learning, especially literacy learning occurs. He has conducted this research in the naturalistic mode he prefers by sitting in classrooms for many hundreds of hours. He argues for an alternate view of learning and an approach to teaching literacy which uncomplicates the process of learning and makes literacy more accessible to more students, especially non-mainstream students. Furthermore, his data shows that this approach to learning leads to the development of highly literate, critically aware, confident readers and writers, who continue to read and write long after they have left school.
Dr. Cambourne's research was fueled by the disconnect between what students accomplish in the classroom, vs. the complicated tasks they have mastered in their everyday lives, outside of the classroom. In 1988 Dr. Brian Cambourne's research proposed that children acquire early facility with oral and written language most easily when certain conditions are present in their environments, both at home and school. His research led to the development of the Seven Conditions of Learning, which have had a profound impact on teaching literacy, math, science and music. Taken from: Toward an educationally relevant theory of literacy learning: Twenty years of inquiry.
Dr. Donald H. Graves.
Donald H. Graves was a pioneer in literacy education who ultimately revolutionized the way that writing is taught around the world. The research study he began in the 1970s at the Atkins Academy transformed writing instruction. His bestselling book, Writing: Teachers and Children at Work, challenged teachers to let children’s needs and interests, not mandates, guide instruction. For the first time, young children became engaged as writers—not just students learning to write, as they were guided to make the decisions writers make in an authentic writing process, they raised our beliefs about what young writers were capable of.
Dr. Donald H. Graves quotes:
"Children want to write. They want to write the first day they attend school. This is no accident. Before they went to school they marked up walls, pavement, with pens...anything that makes a mark. The child's mark says, "I am".
"Understanding writing as communication is at the heart of teaching the writing process."
"Writing taught once or twice a week is just frequently enough to remind children that they can't write, and teachers that they can't teach. Donald Graves. Writing: Teachers and Children at Work.
Jo Boaler
Jo Boaler is an education author and Nomellini-Olivier Professor of Mathematics Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Boaler is involved in promoting mathematics education reform and equitable mathematics classrooms. She is the co-founder and faculty director of youcubed, a Stanford centre that provides mathematics education resources to teachers, students and parents.
Jo Boaler quotes:
“A lot of scientific evidence suggests that the difference between those who succeed and those who don't is not the brains they were born with, but their approach to life, the messages they receive about their potential, and the opportunities they have to learn.”
Jo Boaler, Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching
“Every time a student makes a mistake in math, they grow a synapse.”
“Some students think their role in math classrooms is to memorize all the steps and methods. Other students think their role is to connect ideas. These different strategies link, unsurprisingly, to achievement, and the students who memorize are the lowest achieving in the world.”
― Jo Boaler, What's Math Got to Do with It?: How Teachers and Parents Can Transform Mathematics Learning and Inspire Success
L.S. Vygotsky
Vygotsky was a soviet psychologist who studied linguistics and philosophy at the University of Moscow before becoming involved in psychological research. While working at Moscow’s Institute of Psychology (1924–34), he became a major figure in post-revolutionary Soviet psychology. He studied the role of social and cultural factors in the making of human consciousness; his theories and their relationship to the development of speech influenced psychologists such as A.R. Luria and Jean Piaget.
Two pivotal outcomes of Vygotsky's research involve his theory of The Zone of Proximal Development: which refers to the distance between the actual development level, as determined by independent problem solving, and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. Taken from: Vygotsky, 1978, p 86. Mind in Society. The Development of Higher Psycholocialcal Processes. http://home.fau.edu/musgrove/web/vygotsky1978.pdf
Lev S. Vygotsky quotes:
"What a child can do today with assistance, she will be able to do by herself tomorrow".
"Through others we become ourselves".
The second major outcome of Vygotsky's work is his belief regarding how cognitive influences and potential are shaped by our earliest cultural experiences. Taken from Peter Smagorinky's 2007: Vygotsky and the Social Dynamics of Classrooms. Vygotsky believed that is it not possible to understand a child's development without some understanding of the culture in which the child is raised.
Michelle Fine
Silencing in Public Schools. 2002. Fine, Michelle, "Silencing in Public Schools" (1987). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pubs/620
Fine is a founding faculty member of the Public Science Project, which produces theoretically informed and historically enriched research in social policy debates and organizing movements for educational equity and human rights
Paulo Freire
Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. He is best known for his influential work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which is generally considered one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement.
James Paul Gee
James Gee is a retired American researcher who worked in psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, bilingual education, and literacy. Gee most recently held the position as the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University.
Donaldo Macedo
The Illiteracy of English-Only LIteracy. 2000
Donaldo Macedo (born 1950) is a Cape Verdean-American critical theorist, linguist, and expert on literacy, critical pedagogy and multicultural education studies. Until 2019 he was Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Donaldo Macedo quote: "Educators must factor in the crucial roles that cultural identity, race, class, and poverty have on student achievement. Beyond empirical data are always human faces".
Jane Hansen
https://www.readinghalloffame.org/sites/default/files/vita_hansen.pdfCustomers
Dr. Hansen, professor emerita in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, dedicated her career to research with young children on reading and writing across the curriculum. She is also the former director of the Central Virginia Writing Project.
Formerly a professor at the University of New Hampshire, Hansen published When Writers Read, Second Edition (Heinemann, 2001) and When Learners Evaluate (Heinemann, 1998). She coedited, with Thomas Newkirk and Donald Graves, Breaking Ground: Teachers Relate Reading and Writing in the Elementary School (Heinemann, 1985). In 1996, Hansen collaborated with Kathy Staley to produce the video series Portfolios: Students as Readers, Writers, and Evaluators.
https://youtu.be/gxKWJtEGzIk?list=PLLxDwKxHx1yLGUFfNPK4ybFfxplh4aRku
Anne Haas Dyson
The Pinecone Wars: Studying Writing in a Community of Children. 2008.
Anne Haas Dyson is a professor at the University of Illinois. Her fields are the study of literacy, pedagogy, and contemporary, diverse childhoods. Using qualitative and sociolinguistic research procedures, Dyson examines the use of written language from children's perspectives within their social worlds, and as they engage with popular culture.