Education Report - Lecture or Interactive Teaching? Old Issue, New Study
教育报道 - 填鸭式授课与互动式教学孰优孰劣？
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
这里是美国之音慢速英语教育报道。
Professors have lectured for centuries. But how effective is lecturing to students compared to working with them?
填鸭式授课这种教学方式已经持续了几个世纪，但和互动式教学相比，哪种方式更为有效呢？
A new study compared two classes of a beginning physics course at the University of British Columbia in Canada. There were more than two hundred sixty students in each section. Both were taught by popular and experienced professors.
一项新的研究对加拿大英属哥伦比亚大学两个班级的初级物理课程进行了比较。每个班级都有超过260名学生，都是由受学生欢迎、经验丰富的教授授课。
The study took place for one week near the end of the year. One class continued to be taught in the traditional lecture style. The other professor was replaced by two teachers. They had little teaching experience but received training in interactive teaching methods. The training was led by Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who leads a science education program.
该研究在学年最后一个星期进行。一个班级继续按传统教学方式授课。另一个班级的授课教授由两名教师代替，这两名教师几乎没有教学经验，但接受了互动式教学方法的培训。这项培训由诺贝尔奖获得者、物理学家卡尔·威曼(Carl Wieman)执导。
There was almost no lecturing. The teachers put the students in small groups to discuss and answer questions. They gave them readings and quizzes to finish before class so they would come prepared to discuss the material.
这两名教师几乎没有给学生们讲课。他们将学生分成小组讨论并回答问题。他们在课前为学生们提供阅读材料和练习题，这样学生们在讨论前已有所准备。
Professor Wieman says before the experiment with these and other activities, test scores for both classes were the same.
威曼教授表示，在这些教学活动的试验之前，两个班级的考试成绩大相同。
CARL WIEMAN: "There was a great deal of careful data collected showing how identical the two sections, these two large sections of the class were beforehand. And this focused very much on looking at exactly what could be learned with the different methods from the classroom experience, the time when you have the maximum instructor interaction, or face-to-face interaction time.”
威曼：“我们收集到的大量细致数据显示，这两个班级此前的情况大致相同。因此这次课堂试验可以集中于研究通过这种不同的教学方式，即学生与教师最大限度的互动，会产生怎样一种确切的结果。”
Afterward, both classes took the same test. Students in the interactive class scored nearly twice as high as those in the traditional class. Attendance also increased that week.
接下来，两个班级参加了同一次测试。互动教学班级的学生的分数几乎是传统教学班级学生的两倍，试验的这个星期的出勤率也有所提高。
Graduate student Ellen Schelew was one of the teachers. She says the methods they used are designed to encourage students to think like scientists.
研究生艾伦·谢卢（Ellen Schelew）是其中一名教师。她说她们使用的这种教学方法的目的是鼓励学生们像科学家一样思考。
ELLEN SCHELEW: "Their brains are turned on. They’re thinking hard and they’re really working through these problems. So even if they don’t have enough time to complete a given problem, they are prepared to learn from the instructor feedback that always follows groups’ tasks."
谢卢：“他们的思路被开启。他们认真思考并且确实解决了这些问题。因此，即使他们没有足够的时间来解答一个提问，他们也准备好了在小组学习后的教师反馈中求得答案。”
The study appeared in May in the journal Science. It seems to confirm earlier findings about lecturing to large classes. But some experts have criticized the way the study was done.
这份研究发表在5月份的《科学》杂志上。它似乎证明了此前关于大班填鸭式授课的一些研究结果。但一些专家质疑这项研究的研究方法。
Both of the researchers who taught the class, Ms. Schelew and Louis Deslauriers, were also authors of the study. This could raise questions about whether their involvement might have influenced the results.
授课的两名研究人员谢卢和路易斯·德斯劳里尔斯（Louis Deslauriers）也是这份研究论文的作者。这会引发人们的质疑，他们参与其中是否会影响研究结果？
Professor Wieman is currently on leave from the University of British Columbia and the University of Colorado. He is the associate director for science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
威曼教授在加拿大英属哥伦比亚大学和科罗拉多大学任教，目前正在休假中。他还是白宫科技政策办公室的副主任。
He says research has shown better ways to teach based on evidence about how the brain learns. And he hopes more professors will learn that how someone teaches may be more important than who does the teaching.
他表示，这项研究揭示了基于大脑学习方式的更好的教学方法。他同时希望更多的教授认识到，如何授课比由谁授课更为重要。
And that's the VOA Special English Education Report. I'm Christopher Cruise. |