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checklists — why don’t teachers use them?

December 11, 2015 by Tunya

Checklists — Why Don’t Teachers Use Them?

Atul Gawande, in his book — The Checklist Manifesto — mentions several professions that use checklists as both proven standard practice and to avoid ineptitude (and its repercussions). He mentions doctors, lawyers, professors and engineers. Of course we’re familiar with aviation using checklists which Gawande references.

Why don’t teachers use checklists? Especially teachers of Reading? Most people and certainly most parents see Reading as a very important subject for literacy, for knowledge, for problem solving and for a host of other pedagogical reasons. BUT, the KEY reason why Reading is important is that this skill, gained and fluent, allows the student to get on the very ramp of disciplined learning itself.

Instead, resisting (defying?) proven practices, teachers cling to fallacious beliefs. Note, this term is no redundancy — beliefs can be truths or myths, but it’s when they are false that “fallacious beliefs” can do damage.

In Preventing Reading Failure, Patrick Groff lists 12 fallacious beliefs that interfere with effective teaching of reading: “It seems incredible that the education establishment could have persisted in the folly of inappropriate reading methodology over so many years and with so many millions of failures. Had we not known how to teach children to read easily and well, this persistence in ineffective methods would have been understandable. However, we have had highly successful methods, programs, and techniques for many, many years . . . [with] conclusive research evidence of their efficacy” says Prof. Barbara Bateman, 1987.

(I can find and list the 12 fallacious beliefs in a subsequent post if they are not readily available to our readers.)

What I am pointing out is that there is some deliberate, entrenched stubbornness at play — innocent or malicious — it’s hard to say. It’s harmful, damaging, crippling. When will there be a multi-million dollar damages court award to shake up the teaching “profession”?

Even Daniel Willingham who is, in my view, trying so hard to be diplomatic regarding the virulent Reading Wars, says that in any list of 16 reading activities (Mind: He does not say checklist.) 20 or 25% of the time should be devoted to phonics, “ . . . when kids are practicing phonics, that practice should be focused.” (pg 82, Raising Kids Who Read, 2015).

If there isn’t a Teaching Students To Read in Primary Years Checklist, why doesn’t someone produce it?

[published in Australian blog, Filling the Pail, https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/there-are-many-ways-to-mess-things-up/comment-page-1/#comment-1479 ]


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