Customer Reviews

Hugging the Middle -- How Teachers Teach in an Era of Testing and Accountability

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Larry Cuban has been a keen observer of education for a long time, and he has been able to articulate the trends that have influenced what happens in classrooms. In his latest book (Hugging the Middle ) he draws attention to the pressures exerted on classroom teachers as a result of high-stakes testing.

Cuban's innovative contribution to pedagogic research was to articulate a model that saw either ends of a continuum marked as either student-centred or teacher-centred pedagogy. He argues that teachers hug the pedagogic middle ground when they mix elements of both student and teacher-centred pedagogies. The problem arises when poor test results elicit a move to more conservative mix of teacher-centred pedagogies.

Of real concern is the perception that students from lower socio-economic groups require more teacher-centred direct instruction than their middle-class counterparts.

You will love this book. It is an easy read and it provides an understandable model to help work out what is happening in classrooms around the world. This book has been chosen as the first book for our School Leaders' Reading Group in 2009.