Reaction to Chris Biffle's "Introduction to Power Teaching"
Chris Biffle's Power Teaching method seeks to address the problem that students lack "discipline, background knowlege, and problem-solving skills" by creating "peaceful classrooms full of orderly fun" (Powerteachers.org, 2008, ΒΆ 2). The classroom is based around a routine that the students must be taught. Biffle (2008) claims that the students can be trained in this routine in about twenty minutes. Once the students are trained, the lecture is divided up into small thirty second "micro-lectures" and which are spoken to the students and then the students will repeat to their neighbors (Biffle, 2008). The routine is very strict and fills every second of the class period.According to Biffle (2008), this method can be applied to any grade level from kindergarten to college.
As powerteaching.org (2008) claims, this is a "grassroots" teaching innovation. There is not much educational psychology theory to back it up. Seemingly, the problems that Biffle and other "power-teachers" are trying to remedy can be linked to a student's ability to perform self-regulation. Bandura would suggest that the student must personally be able to establish his or her own goals and try to achieve them by deciding what behaviors will be enforced and what behaviors will not (Ormrod, 2006, p.347). The student would then be determined to behave in those ways that they have determined to be appropriate based on the reinforcement by the teacher. Biffle's power teaching takes the individual out of the question. The entire class, as a whole, has to react to what the teacher says. There is reinforcement involved in the power-teacher's use of extra-credit versus dextra-credit, but that reinforces, again, the class as a whole. The apparent purpose of Biffle's routine is to allow the teacher to have complete control over the students' behavior. Instead of the student learning self-regulation of their behavior, Biffle wants the teacher to regulate their behavior through use of this routine. Every moment of the class time is managed entirely by this routine.This could be harmful to the students' development since they are not learning to take their own responsibility for their behavior. Biffle's method also does not provide any time for reflection. The student is not given the opportunity to reflect on what they are doing and why they are doing it, they simply function. Without this time to reflect the student cannot perform self-observation.
Another problem that arises when the students are not given the time to reflect is that the student is not really given the opportunity to think independently on the subject that the teacher is presenting. The student may be rehearsing the information with their neighbor, but they are probably not internalizing it. There is no break before more information is given to them. Without this opportunity to internalize and think indepenently about the new information the student isn't really able to think about the information critically. Biffle's approach does not provide any room for the student to disagree or challenge the information that is presented. This would likely be disagreeable both to Piaget and Vygotsky. Piaget would want students to be able to construct an understanding of the world by relating what they are learning to what they already know (Ormrod, 2008, p.33). Without breaks in instruction, the student would have to rely entirely on how the teacher relates the information and not how they would relate the information to their lives. Vygotsky would probably be opposed to this teaching method because it does not allow the student time to perform "self-talk" or "inner-speech" which he would think essential for a studetn who is trying to work through a task (Ormrod, 2008, p.30). Biffle's approach is also devoid of tools such as scaffolding and coaching that would be essential for the application of Vygotsky's theory. Some might say that Biffle's method would be supported by Vygotsky because it allows students to work together in pairs. However in Biffle's classroom, the students are not working through and trying to figure out a problem, they are simply repeating the information that the teacher has said. Another issue that a teacher might face when the oportunity for reflection is not provided is the threat of cognitive overload. If the student does not have the opportunity to rest their mind and encode this information, the teacher runs the risk of the student reaching cognitive overload and losing the information that might have been retained by the student.
Finally, Biffle claims to keep a check on what students are learning. He advocates for an informal assessment of the what the students have understood during his class period. There is also no consistency in the assessment of different students. However, by simply moving from group to group listening to what they are "reviewing," Biffle may not actually be assessing what the students will have retained in their long-term memory. There is certainly nothing in this kind of assessment that is evaluating a student's mastery of concepts. This kind of assessment is really only showing the ability for a student to recall what the teacher has just told them, which is limited to short term/working memory.
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