Effective Teachers My Eye!

This post is in response to recent commentary concerning "effective teachers" written by Andrew J. Rotherham in eduwonk blog. My purpose is a thoughtful critique of ideas not people.

I suggest the usefulness of the expression "effective teachers" will fade and die along with "credentialed teacher" and "experienced teacher". The reason is simple. All of these expressions fail to factor in past, present and future context. Basically, context like change shows no mercy to ideas and concepts that lack the capacity or fail to evolve and adapt over time. One might say, these expresions emerge and are buried in the same original ground seperated from all others.

An alternative focus ought to identify "effective learners". An "effective learner" is any individual that can at least read, write, speak and count at or above the fifth grade according to standards acceptable to academia, politicians and consumers of education. These competencies are minimal skills required to pursue advanced technical training or higher education. Without these skills success in life can be difficult and limited.

Once we identify "effective learners", we must identify personal and environmental circumstances with an eye for discovering emerging and current individual learning paradigmes. An accurate paradigm should help predict future success in learning. Failed predictions will hopefully stimulate the researcher to discover faulty assumptions and analysis, and try again.
Successful predictions, invite further exploration of paradigm patterns shared by other "effective learners". Possibly, a valid and realiable theory of learning might emerge from current chaos in education today.

Always, the tree of education has roots leading to the individual learner. Useful education ideas and concepts must be firmly anchored to living and dynamic persons who are in constant search for adaptive strategies that supports their continued success as "effective learners".
Their are no effective schools or systems of education. Even teachers succumb to the grinding cog of the system. What is enduring in education today? Well, at any given arbitrary end point of the day, a steady gaze through the fog of time reveals failed learners and "effective learners". They are survivors and have endured the folly and fortune called education.

Certainly, good people, informative books and fine buildings can play an important role in education. But, at the end of the day, individuals press go or no go when it comes to learning. I implore those who care about education to focus first on individual learners. While we can expect to meander and fall prey to false promises in our search for education insights, please end the day celebrating people who often succeed, sometimes fail, but always rise each morning and engage life's challenges and opportunities.

Bert John Wainwright