Month: September 2012

Two Latino-Focused Events, This October!

Two Latino-Focused Events, This October!

Reading Time: 2 minutes

The Latino Midwest Symposium and Iowa Latino Conference are taking place in Iowa City October 11-13.

The University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, under the direction of three UofI professors (Claire Fox, Omar Valerio-Jimenez and Santiago Vaquera-Vasquez), organized the symposium which features a stellar lineup of academics well-versed in Midwest Latino influences across many fields. Continue reading “Two Latino-Focused Events, This October!”

No Two Students Are the Same:  The Potential of Competency-based Education

No Two Students Are the Same: The Potential of Competency-based Education

Reading Time: 7 minutes

I am a mother.  And this may shock you, I often resort to reading child-rearing books – usually about discipline.  Uncover your mouths.  It’s true.  The other day I came across a statement from Alan E. Kazdin, the Director of the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic, in a discussion of helping children to develop appropriate behaviors.  Dr. Kazdin says, “Instead of thinking of it as a series of benchmarks that have to be met by such and such a calendar date, think of it as the process of your child achieving a level of mastery of behaviors you want”  (Kazdin 2008).  This certainly seems true as far as discipline and behavior for my own children and it immediately struck me that this idea of mastering behaviors at different times and in different ways can also apply to the way children learn in a classroom.  Any parent with multiple children will tell you that no two kids learn at the same pace or master the same skills in the same way, yet our schools work on a system based around the Carnegie unit – the idea that credit in a subject is gained by the amount of time spent in a classroom and with an instructor.  The notion of children mastering a subject in different ways, demonstrating that mastery, and then moving at an individual pace towards a diploma is not part of the design in most classrooms. Continue reading “No Two Students Are the Same: The Potential of Competency-based Education”

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