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(More customer reviews)This is an important book because Chall endeavors to provide a historical and social context for understanding the debates about how best to teach the majority of children in schools. Chall invites educators, publishers, parents, and policy makers to look beyond the politics and trends in education, and to focus on the research evidence on what methods get results. She also calls for teacher training programs to empower teachers with the knowledge to examine and question the research they base their practice on. She advocates for using the past constructively to inform choices made in the future. She often said that doctors would never dream of prescribing a brand new treatment without researching past cures and treatments... and yet educators, she said, seemed to reinvent the same ideas over and over without considerating research evidence already gathered. It made her hopping mad.
What is interesting to about this book is the story of it's evolution. Originally Chall drafted a very candid and straight forward manuscript based on the questions and opinions she had developed over 50 years as an educator. The book was going to be quite different from her well known scholarly publications. But then she kept rediscovering bits of newspaper and scraps from nagazines which she had piled away in vast personal collection of snippets -- all of which confirmed her thinking on what was going on in education. She became so excited about each interesting piece of evidence that including them became irresistable for her. But with each new snippet she then felt a need to address alternative viewpoints in order to try and offer a well rounded approach. Having been attacked in the past for her poignant views, I think she found it difficult (or maybe just stupid) to set herself for obvious criticisms. So what would originally have been a very personal argument based on her depth of experience in the field eventually evolved into a scholarly review of the historical evidence. This book -- completed during the last month's of her impressive life -- may not be her best work. But it is certainly her most personal. You just have to read between the lines.
Click Here to see more reviews about: The Academic Achievement Challenge: What Really Works in the Classroom
This volume addresses one of the central issues in education: how best to instruct our students. From the late Jeanne S. Chall, Professor of Education at Harvard University and a leading figure in American education, the book reviews and evaluates the many educational reforms and innovations that have been proposed and employed over the past century. Systematically analyzing a vast body of qualitative and quantitative research, Chall compares achievement rates that result from traditional, teacher-centered approaches with those resulting from progressive, student-centered methods. Her findings are striking and clear: that teacher-centered approaches result in higher achievement overall, with particular benefits for children of lower socioeconomic status and those with learning difficulties. Offering cogent recommendations for practice, the book makes a strong case for basing future education reforms and innovations on a solid empirical foundation. In a new foreword to the paperback edition, Marilyn Jager Adams reflects on Chall's deep-rooted commitment to and enduring legacy in educating America's children.
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