Look at the curriculum & instruction. If it is grounded in telling and testing, be skeptical of the practitioners. Cognitive and learning science has taught us lots in recent decades, if educators don’t know those lessons, they will be ineffective.
@garyackerman what methods would you recommend? What’s the best way for learning in our current understanding? (I know that’s too complicated to answer in a toot but I’m curious of where I can start looking for answers).
@daltonfunbar The correct answer to your question is “it depends.” If we really want students to “know” the matetial, they must experience it from different perspectives (eg. learn computations and problem solving and framing and application and questioning and analysis… in math). There is no one strategy that will work for each as the learning is different in each. In my experience the best classrooms are the one in which teaching varies.
@daltonfunbar I’m going to try to get one of my ESL colleagues to join Mastodon and connect with you.
@garyackerman do you know off the top of your head where I can find some ideas for language acquisition? I work with ESL students and I find the standard stuff I learned in my TEFL as (being polite) not the full picture.