Average cost. Evidence security. Mastery learning appears to be a promising strategy for narrowing the gap. What is it? How effective is it? How secure is the evidence? What are the costs? What should I consider? Connect with us Subscribe to our newsletter for updates Sign up to the Evidence for Learning e-news to receive updates on evidence-informed practice taking place in Australia and internationally.
Follow us on. Mastery learning focusses on mastering a topic before you move on to a more advanced one. That sounds logical, right? We group students together, usually by age and perceived ability and we put them all together at the same pace.
Teachers have to follow the curriculum and have to get everything done in one year. I like to think of it as a train. Everyone needs to keep up, because the train rides on.
Students who have difficulties with a topic, will typically continue to have difficulties with related topics in the future. A student has to master the basics of a course first, before he can build upon that knowledge. This way students start to disengage. We all know how our school system works. Why is it so different from the work place? Sal makes the analogy with construction. Do what you can. So the workmen do what they can. And how can we implement it most effectively?
Mastery learning breaks down the information students need to learn into units with clear learning outcomes. Students must continue to work on a given unit until they achieve the learning outcomes. This continues until the student meets the required level of mastery, and then they can move on to the next stage.
The key point of mastery learning is that it allows students to work at their own pace as they learn new knowledge and skills. Mastery learning allows every student the opportunity to achieve learning outcomes. This moves the focus away from shaming students, and towards how teachers can provide enough time, and use effective teaching strategies, to help all students reach the same level of learning. The effectiveness of mastery learning has been widely investigated. In , the Education Endowment Foundation EEF published a report based on several meta-analyses of mastery learning.
One particular advantage of mastery learning is its potential for narrowing the attainment gap. Another recent report by the EEF , on the impact of school closures during the Covid crisis, suggests that the attainment gap is getting wider , with year 2 children who are eligible for free school meals now being around 7 months behind their peers who are not eligible for free school meals.
For those kiddos that I identify as going through the material too quickly, I will slow them down. Now the bigger concern for me is the kiddos that are going too slowly, because like you said, they have to eventually finish by the end of May.
For those kids, if I notice a kid falling maybe two weeks behind my suggested pacing calendar, I would sit down with them with a blank calendar, and I would ask them to make me a plan. What are you going to do to catch up?
In this plan, the focus was more on what are you doing every day in class? How are you deciding to use your time? They were on their cell phones, they were chatting. Most of the grades that went in the grade book were the mastery checks, which they were allowed to retake as many times as they needed. But each time they sat down to take a mastery check—again, those are usually 5 to 10 questions and takes them about 10 minutes—the questions were different.
That typically went into the grade book, but the other part was those conversations. Johnson and prove my learning to her through conversations. I would simply read one of those check-for-understanding questions.
The students could prepare for those conversations, they knew what I was going to ask. I think they felt more comfortable about having those conversations because they knew they had time to prepare their responses. I think most educators agree that students should prove they understand a concept before they move on to the next concept.
How do you literally make it happen? How do you track student progress?
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