Many teachers disregard students’ background experiences when they teach. That is analogous to using the English Language to teach ELL students, but without caring if the student is learning. Many teachers would consider that to be a mistake. Yet, that is what teachers do when they teach but fail to consider students’ background experiences. Students whose home and community experiences differ from school experiences face similar challenges as ELL students. They are faced with the problems of understanding how the ideas are related. An ELL student can be very good in Mathematics. However, if their teachers insists on disregarding their background experiences, the ELL student is likely to fail. The students will achieve lower than if the they had continued to receive instruction in their native language. An ELL student may start to speak the English Language, but h/her awareness of the deficiency shake h/her confidence. Besides the language barrier, they also face other difficulties. Many teachers disregarded students’ background experiences when they teach because they lacked an adequate teaching method to help their students.
Content and Strategy Centered Teaching and Learning (CSCTL).
Content and Strategy Centered Teaching and Learning (CSCTL) is a teaching practice emphasizing both content and strategies. In this practice, teachers structure lessons to reflect and enhance students’ experiences. The fundamental beliefs behind CSCTL state that, in developing knowledge, some students (a) dive deeply into their core experiences. These students learn effectively. Many others (b) merely reach to the surface of the core elements of their experiences, and they learn inefficiently. (2) to produce knowledge, students engage activities in phases. For example, in the analytic phase, students reach into the elements of experiences to authenticate the features of an appearance. The (3) elements of experience help to modify and obtain knowledge of an object. The new knowledge obtained also modifies the elements of one’s experiences (Dewey, 1934). A student must be skilled in deliberate thinking activities to reach into the core elements of experiences or learn effectively. Students develop skills to learn effectively when lessons are structured to enhance their knowledge development efforts.
Deliberate thinking implies that there is a spontaneous (not deliberate) version of thinking. So, to say that a student thinks deliberately, what is meant is student deliberately models spontaneous thinking (knowledge development) activities. In spontaneous thinking activities, one (1) perceives, (2) analyzes, and (3) synthesizes an appearance to represent an object (Alison, 2018). In deliberate thinking, a person models spontaneous thinking activities to obtain an enhanced object. Accordingly, structured lessons are about recognizing how phases of lessons relate to phases of thinking. They are about organizing activities to reflect and enhance students’ efforts.
Allison (2018) explained that to develop and obtain knowledge of an object, a person engages phases of thinking activities. He identified and explained the first three phases of thinking activities as (1) perceptive, (2) analytic, and (3) synthetic. Wittgenstein (1927) identified and explained the other phases of thinking as (4) private and (5) public phases of thinking activities. Initially, activities in the first three phases of thinking are spontaneous, not deliberate. A spontaneous object does not relate well with others in understanding or help to achieve progress. A person must think deliberately; that is, model activities of the initial phases of thinking to clarify objects. A person must understand how objects relate to one another to achieve progress. The purpose of a lesson is to enhance students’ skills for deliberate thinking activities. However, only a few teachers learn about students’ thinking; how phases of lessons relate to phases of knowledge development activities.
Addressing Challenges Using CSCTL
The CSCTL emphasizes activities of the phases of knowledge development. A teacher is able to modify a phase of lesson activities based on the challenge they are addressing. CSCTL is said to be strategy-centered because the teacher engages students in developing the skills for engaging their experiences. CSCTL has been in use since the early 1990s. That was when I first trained teachers in the Alternative High School, Roosevelt, in the CSCTL practices. In the early 1990s, there was a challenge at the Roosevelt school district. Most of the students were uninterested in school learning. They were disruptive, and they easily attracted struggling students to their negative activities. Students did not stay in their classrooms and learn because the lessons did not address their interests. On the other hand, the teachers believed that students learned effectively when they focused exclusively on content. They did not know about CSCTL or structured lessons to reinforce students’ efforts. I discussed my views with the administrators; they supported me, and I introduced the CSCTL practices. I wrote the Alt. High School program grant application and was approved by the NYSED (https://nyite.org/alternative-high-school-equivalency-preparation-program-approval/).
Correspondence Between Phase of Thinking and Lessons
The teachers did not know about CSCTL. They had not learned about activities that enhance perceptive thinking activities. Also that t activities or conditions that enhance perceptive thinking also enhance students efforts in the first phase of lessons. They did not consider students’ experiences and how those experiences influence their efforts. Instead, they had focused exclusively on content, but not on strategy teaching. The result was that many students failed to learn effectively. To address the problem, I trained the teachers in CSCTL practices. Teachers learned how activities that support students’ thinking relate to activities that support and/or enhance students’ efforts in general. They learned how phases of thinking relate or correspond to phases of lesson activities. They developed lessons to reflect students’ thinking, experiences, and concerns.
Perceptive Thinking and First Phase of Lessons
Perceptive thinking is where a person interacts with occurrences and obtains an appearance. In the phase of perceptive thinking, a person enhances their thinking by avoiding distractions. Perceptive thinking activities correspond to the first or triggered interest phase of a lesson. Perception triggers thinking just as activities of the first phase of lessons triggers knowledge development activities. To enhance students’ efforts in the first phase of lessons, teachers learned about thinking activities. Teachers learned about how they must engage students in learning to understand connections between lessons and students’ experiences. Teachers developed lessons that helped students to understand connections between their experiences and lessons. They achieved positive results; the students learned better.
Analytic Thinking and Second Phase of Lessons
Analytic thinking activities is the phase of thinking where students generate instances characterizing an appearance. In analytic thinking, students generate features and other elements of an appearance that help to characterize the appearance. With analytic thinking, a student produces the means (resources) to facilitate thinking in representing an object. Analytic thinking activities correspond to the second or maintained interest phase of a lesson. Analytic thinking provides empirical object and aid thinking. Similarly activities of the maintained interest phase of lessons provides resources and sponsor students’ efforts during lessons. To enhance knowledge development activities in the maintained interest phase of lessons, teachers learned about various learning resources. Teachers developed resources and engaged students more effectively.
Thinking and Third Phase of Lessons
Synthetic thinking is where a person produces or applies rules to determine relationships among elements characterizing an appearance. This is the phase where a person identifies the object of thinking. In synthetic thinking, one identifies objects by producing and applying rules to show relationships among features of an appearance. Synthetic thinking activities correspond to the sustained interest phase of a lesson. Synthetic thinking provides the rules showing how the elements relate to one another and what the relationships mean. Synthetic thinking point to the meaning or significance of the instances of an appearance. Synthetic thinking identifies objects of thinking activities just as formulas help to simplify objects of lessons. To enhance students’ efforts in the sustained interest phase of lessons, teachers learned how to differentiate between instances and formulas. They used instances to explain the topic, but they used formulas to simplify the topics.
Impact of CSCTL Practices
Students responded positively to the CSCTL practices; the school Principal identified more students for the program. We started with a population of 25 disaffected students. Within three years, the number of students grew from 25 to seventy-five. The program’s status also changed from a daytime GED preparation program into an Alternative High School program (I. Alt. School program). The program staff grew from one to six persons: that is, (1) Program administrator also teaching Mathematics and ELA, (2) Mathematics teacher, (3) ELA teacher, (4) Social Studies teacher, (5) assistant teachers, and (6) office secretary handling office-related tasks. I ran the program for six years (1993-1999). When I left in 1999, the graduation rate was 94%.
My Inspiration and Vision for Student Achievement
My inspiration and vision is to create opportunities for all children to learn by engaging their best abilities. To achieve this vision, I engaged and helped teachers to hone their teaching practices. I helped teachers understand how their practices enhance students’ efforts. Children are often excited when they use technologies (Smart Boards, AI, etc.) to learn. Nonetheless, teachers do not learn how technologies affect students’ experiences to maximize students’ efforts. For example, the Smart Board is a new technology; just like cell phones, it attracts and engages children. So, one easily believes that children’s experiences with Smart Boards will translate into experiences that can reinforce their efforts. Yet, when attracted to a technology, children do not engage in activities that reinforce their experiences. Instead, they want to have fun, and fun takes most of the time children spend with technologies. Therefore, the question becomes, how do fun experiences translate into education or experiences that reinforce themselves?
Specifically, technologies have benefits for students; however, the benefits depend on teachers guiding the students. The knowledge that students gain with trained and untrained teachers differ. Children’s achievements depends on whether teachers merely prepare them to pass (pencil and paper) tests or reinforce their efforts. When a teacher focuses exclusively on content but not strategies, students’ learning achievements are most often to be lopsided. Students develop content knowledge from school but develop the skills to reinforce their efforts independently. The result is that many students do not develop their life skills well. They do not learn how to learn or reinforce the content knowledge that helps them pass tests.
Still, there is hope. For example, the Smart Board emphasized the structure of “I do,” “We do,” and “You do.” Here, teachers must not just focus exclusively on content. They must learn about the specific learning strategies that students need to learn effectively. With the prompt “I do,” the question becomes what must teachers be doing that they want students to model? With CSCTL, the answer to this question is that teachers must engage students in activities that reinforce their background experiences. Students’ background experiences are fragmented and diminished when students’ strategies in engaging inside and outside school experiences are unrelated.
Teachers engage students in reinforcing their experiences when they engage in tasks that reflect phases of students’ thinking activities. For example, teachers warmly welcome students into classrooms in the first phase of lessons, students learn to do the same. They create an environment of mutual respect, where students feel valued, engaged, and responsible to engage well. Teacher may also engage students in discussing how lessons relate to their knowledge development agenda. Thus, students engage in creating learning environments where they build experiences that reinforce their background knowledge and efforts.
Additional links: The materials in these links are free of charge. Please, draw your teachers’ attention to them. And, please, send your support (here – https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2YKH8L7TK7NDL) so we can continue to do the research and improve this program.
(I) CSCTL Lesson Plan – Lesson-Plan request a copy/
(II) CSCTL Lesson Plan Template – request your copy.
(III) CSCTL Lesson Plan: Lesson Plan-explanation/
(IV) CSCTL Lesson: Classroom Practical – https://nyite.org/1914-2/
Dr. Martin Odudukudu
