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Archive for August, 2011

It was announced last summer that total student loan debt, at 0 billion, now exceeds total US credit card debt, itself bloated to the bubble level of 7 billion. And student loan debt is growing at the rate of billion a year. 

There are far fewer students than there are credit card holders. Could there be a student debt bubble at a time when college graduates’ jobs and earnings prospects are as gloomy as they have been at any time since the Great Depression?

The data indicate that today’s students are saddled with a burden similar to the one currently borne by their parents. Most of these parents have experienced decades of stagnating wages, and have only one asset, home equity.  The housing meltdown has caused that resource either to disappear or to turn into a punishing debt load. The younger generation too appears to have mortgaged its future earnings in the form of student loan debt.

The most recent complete statistics cover 2008, when debt was held by 62 % of students from public universities, 72 % from private nonprofit schools, and a whopping 96 % from private for-profit (“proprietary”) schools. 

For-profit school enrollment is growing faster than enrollment at public schools, and a growing percentage of students attending for-profit schools represent holders of debt likely to default. In order to get a better handle on the dynamics of student debt growth, it is helpful to sketch the connection between the current crisis in public education and the recent rapid growth of the for-profits.

Crisis of Public Education Precipitates Private School Growth

Since the most common advise to the unemployed is to “get a college education”, and tuition at public institutions is at least half or less than private-school rates, public higher education institutions have been swamped with an influx of out of work adults. This has resulted in enrollment gluts at many state colleges. At the same time, tuition is increasing just when household income and hence the affordability of higher education are declining. 

Here is how this scenario unfolds:

With few exceptions, state-funded colleges and universities set tuition rates based on policy and budget decisions made  by state legislatures. High and increasing unemployment and declining wages have resulted in  declining public revenues. This in turn leads to  budget cut directives from legislative bodies to public higher education institutions, often accompanied by the authority to increase tuition. 

For example, a 14% budget cut to an institution may be “offset” by giving the governing boards of the school the authority to raise tuition by a maximum of 7%. Often the imbalance created by a cut to the base budget and an increase in tuition is made worse by limits on enrollment. A state legislative body may cut an institution’s budget, allow it to increase tuition, but not provide per-student funding increases to keep pace with the accelerating enrollment demand. 

This affects tuition rates at for-profit institutions. More students who would otherwise attend a state institution or a private, non-profit school are finding themselves without a seat at over-enrolled campuses. More students are pushed into the online and for-profit sectors, and proprietary schools sieze the day by inflating their tuition costs. 

Because online colleges lack the enrollment constraints of a physical campus, they are uniquely poised to capture huge proportions of the growing higher education market by starting classes in non-traditional intervals (the University of Phoenix, for example, begins its online classes on a 5-week rolling basis) and without regard to space, charging ever-increasing rates to students who have no other choice. 

Instead of waiting for an admissions decision or a financial aid package from a traditional college, students can enroll immediately online. This ease of use and accessibility to any student has allowed the for-profit sector to capture a growing portion of the higher education market and a growing proportion of education-targeted public money. Enrollments at for-profit colleges have increased in the last ten years by 225%, far outpacing public institution increases. 

Thus, the neoliberal assault on public education not only tends to push more students into private institutions, it also generates upward pressure on tuition costs. This results in growing pressure on enrollees at proprietary schools to take on student loan debt.

How Healthy Are Student Loans?

The extraordinary growth of student debt paralleled the bubble years, from the beginnings of the dot.com bubble in the mid-1990s to the bursting of the housing bubble. From 1994 to 2008, average debt levels for graduating seniors more than doubled to ,200, according to The Student Loan Project, a nonprofit research and policy organization. More than 10 percent of those completing their bachelor’s degree are now saddled with over ,000 in debt.

Are student loans as financially problematic as the junk mortgage securities still held by the biggest banks? That depends on how those loans were rated and the ability of the borrower to repay. 

In the build-up to the housing crisis, the major ratings agencies used by the biggest banks gave high ratings to mortgage-backed securities that were in fact toxic. A similar pattern is evident in student loans. 

The health of student loans is officially assessed by the “cohort-default rate,” a supposedly reliable predictor of the likelihood that borrowers will default. But the cohort-default rate only measures the rate of defaults during the first two years of repayment. Defaults that occur after two years are not tracked by the Department of Education for institutional financial aid eligibility. Nor do government loans require credit checks or other types of regard for whether a student will be able to repay the loans.

There is about 0 billion in total outstanding federal and private student-loan debt. Only 40% of that debt is actively being repaid. The rest is in default, or in deferment (when a student requests temporary postponement of payment because of economic hardship), which means payments and interest are halted, or in forbearance. Interest on government loans is suspended during deferment, but continues to accrue on private loans.

As tuitions increase, loan amounts increase; private loan interest rates have reached highs of 20%. Add that to a deeply troubled economy and dismal job market, and we have the full trappings of a major bubble. As it goes with contemporary bubbles, when the loans go into default, taxpayers will be forced to pick up the tab, since just about all loans to date are backed by the federal government.

Of course the usual suspects are among the top private lenders: Citigroup, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan-Chase.

Financial Aid and the Federal Tilt to Private Schools

A higher percentage of students enrolled at private, for-profit (“proprietary”)  schools hold education debt (96 %) than students at public colleges and universities or students attending private non-profits. 

Two out of every five students enrolled at proprietary schools are in default on their education loans 15 years after the loans were issued. 
In spite of this high extended default rate, for-profit colleges are in no danger of losing their access to federal financial aid because, as we have seen, the Department of Education does not record defaults after the first two years of repayment. 

Nor have the disturbing findings of recent Congressional hearings on the recruitment techniques of proprietary colleges jeopardized these schools’
access to federal funds. The hearings displayed footage from an undercover investigation showing admissions staff at proprietary schools using recruitment techniques explicitly forbidden by the National Association of College Admissions Counselors. Admissions and enrollment employees are also shown misrepresenting the costs of an education, the graduation and employment rates of students, and the accreditation status of institutions. 

Student Loan Settlement
These deceptions increase the likelihood that graduates of for-profits will have special difficulties repaying their loans, since the majority enrolled at these schools are low-income students. (Forbes magazine, Oct. 26, 2010, “When For-Profits Target Low-Income Students”, Arnold L. Mitchem)

A credit scoreisnot requiredforfederal loan eligibility. Neither is information regarding income, assets, or employment. Borrowing is still encouraged in the face of strong evidence that the likelihood of default is high. 

Loaning money to anyone without prime qualifications was “subprime lending” during the ballooning of the housing bubble, when banks were enticing otherwise ineligible candidates to buy houses they could not afford. 

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Shouldn’t easy lending without adequate credit checks to college students with insecure credit also be considered “subprime lending”? 

Government’s Bias Toward the Private Educational Sector

In 2009 President Obama initially pledged billion in stimulus funds to help community colleges through the economic crisis. Last March that sum was slashed to billion.The umpteenth example of a broken Obama promise.

We see a drastic cut in federal stimulus funding even as state funding for higher education is expected to fall even further. At a time whencommunity colleges across the country are overflowing with returning students seeking new skills and high school graduates who can’t afford ever-rising tuition rates at many four-year schools,the majority of education-bound stimulus funds are going to for-profit institutions, not community colleges. (Our home state of Washington illustrates the general direction of the administration’s “reform” of higher education: for the first time in the state’s history, public funds no longer pay the majority of higher education costs.)

Apart from stimulus funding, overall government student aid is disproportionately aimed at those attending proprietary schools. Nearly 25% of federal financial aid is spent on students attending for-profit colleges, even though these colleges enroll less than 10% of the nation’s college students. 

Proprietary schools now rely on federal financial aid – PELL Grants and federal loans – as their primary source of revenue. 

Even the most profitable proprietary schools receive the majority of their funding from federal financial aid programs. According to a U.S.-Senate-sponsored study, The University of Phoenix, the largest private university in North America, receives 90% of its funding from the federal government. Not-so-incidentally, proprietary schools are among the largest donors to Education Committee members.

Proponents of the system defend it by pointing out that public colleges also rely on taxpayer subsidies for the majority of their revenue. But this overlooks a decisive difference: what proprietary schools don’t have that  public schools do, is an obligation as a state agency to deliver a high quality education to its students. Instead, proprietary schools have a legal fiduciary duty to their stockholders, like any other for-profit enterprise. As a result, according to a PBS Frontline investigation, the sector spends 20 to 25 % of its budget on marketing and only 10 to 20 % on faculty.

The Track Record of For-Profit Colleges

The track record of for-profit colleges does not justify their disproportionate share of government largesse. 

Drop out rates are higher than they are at public and non-proprietary private schools, often as high as 50 %. Irrespective of whether a student drops out, the for-profit college has already pocketed tuition and fees. The student is left still burdened with a substantial loan obligation.

As for graduation rates, a 2008 report by the National Center for Education Statistics puts the graduation rate for students at for-profits beginning their studies in 2002 at 22%,  an 11% drop from students enrolling in 2000. The same cohort attending public and private non-profits graduated at rates of roughly 54% and 64%, respectively. Graduate or not,  the debt burden remains.

Suppose the student does not drop out but either seeks to transfer to a public or another non-profit, or completes her studies and enters the job market with a proprietary degree?  Many students assume that credits are transferable to a public or nonprofit, but they aren’t, so they pay twice to attain their degree. The school holds out the lure of high-paying jobs upon graduation, but either no such jobs exist or they require education or experience beyond what the school provided. Congressional studies have shown that the earnings of proprietary graduates are the lowest of all graduates. According to a 2009 Bloomberg report on salary comparisons between traditional and online degree-holders, graduates with bachelor’s degrees from traditional colleges earn a median salary of ,200, while those with degrees from the University of Phoenix earn only ,500, and ,100 from for-profit American Intercontinental.

On top of these earnings and job-prospectdisadvantages, proprietary graduates bear the heaviest academic debt burden. The Education Department reports that 43 % of those who default on student loans attended for-profit schools, even though only 26% of borrowers attended such schools. Many of those who attended for-profits don’t earn enough to repay their loans. It’s not uncommon for a student who either paid out of pocket or took out a loan for a ,000 degree to find herself stuck in a ,000 a year job. This only adds insult to injury: a Government Accounting Office study reports that “A student interested in a massage therapy certificate costing ,000 at a for-profit college was told that the program was a good value. However, the same certificate from a local community college cost 0.00.”

Paying back student loans out of low income and over a long period of time can rule out the possibility of making other financial investments required for the vanishing American Dream, such as buying a house, or saving for retirement or for one’s children’s education.

All in all, the for-profits’ track record is more than dismaying. In too many cases, students leave proprietary schools in worse financial shape than they were in before they enrolled. The problem is not limited to proprietary graduates: most of this generation of college grads now possess more debt than opportunity. 

You might think that the unflattering record of for-profit schools would restrain government gift-giving. After all, the Obama administration’s current education policy would punish “underperforming” public schools and teachers. But these policies target the public sector exclusively: the aim is to undermine teachers’ unions and encourage privatization by boosting charter schools. It is entirely consistent with Washington’s agenda that the dismal performance of proprietary schools does not jeopardize their future access to public financial aid funds – as long as the student does not default on their loan within two years of dropping out.

The Career College Association, the lobbying arm of publicly traded colleges, finds all this to be irrelevant. It relies on a different type of indicator from the rest of the higher education sector to measure the success of its for-profit colleges: stock prices. Remarkable. We see the disproportionate flourishing of  ”schools” whose primary concern has nothing to do with education.

Proprietary Schools and the Military

Proprietary schools target the military market with an aggressive and highly successful marketing campaign. For-profit colleges are the destination of high numbers of active duty and recently discharged military personnel. Data from the US Army and Defense Department show that the University of Phoenix is the third largest receiver of education funding from the US Army. 

29% of military enrollments are in the for-profit sector, and 40% of annual tuition assistance to veterans winds up going to proprietary schools. Often targeted while still enlisted, military personnel are attracted to the relative ease with which they can attend school, often at night, on the weekends, or for active-duty military, even while deployed. With the recent reduction of troops in Iraq, more service members are returning to the United States. Waiting for them are generous G.I. Bill benefits, allowing them to pursue vocational or baccalaureate degrees at accredited colleges. The for-profit sector is poised to corner that market aspublic institutions squeezetheir enrollments, raise tuition and watch public support of higher education dwindle in the current resurrection of pre-Keynesian economic policy. 

The job prospects for military personnel at for-profits are predictably poor. A Bloomberg report quotes a retired Marine Corps Colonel who now directs human resources for U.S. Fields Operations at Schindler Elevator Corp., as saying “we don’t even consider” online for-profit degree-holding candidates for the company’s management development program.

THE PRIVATE LENDERS: SECURITIZATION AS USUAL

The two largest holders of student loans are SLM Corp (SLM) and Student Loan Corp (STU), a subsidiary of Citigroup. SLM -Sallie Mae-  was originated as a Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE) in 1972. The idea was to prime it for eventual privatization. In 1984 the company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol SLM.In 2002  Sallie Mae shed the its GSE status and became a subsidiary of the Delaware-chartered publicly traded holding company SLM Holding Corporation.Finally,in 2004 the company officially terminated its ties to the federal government. 

As the nation’s largest single private provider of student loan funding, SLM has to date lent to more than 31 million students. In 2009 it lent approximately .3 billion in private loans and between .5 billion and billion in 2010. 

In the 1990s, well before its full privatization, Sallie’s operations were increasingly swept into the financialization of the economy.It jumped whole hog onto the securitization bandwagon, lumping togetherand repackaginga large portion of its loansand selling them as bonds to investors. SLM created and marketed its own species of asset-backed securitized student loans, Student Loan Asset Backed Securities (SLABS).When derivatives trading went through the roof following the 1998 repeal of Glass-Steagal, increasingly diverse tranches of Sallie-Mae-backed SLABS entered the market. The company is now also buying  and selling the obligations of state and nonprofit educational-loan agencies. 

Student loans were included in the same securities that are blamed for the triggering of the financial crisis, and financial products containing these same student loans continue to be traded to this day. The health of these tranches and securities is, as we have seen, highly suspect. 

SLM’s risk was minimized as long as the feds guaranteed its loans. But as part of last March’s health care legislation, starting in July 2010 federally subsidized education loans were no longer available to private lenders. What do education loans have to do with health care? Since the government took federal loan originations in-house, making them available only through the Department of Education, it no longer has to pay hefty fees (acting as the guarantee) to private banks. The Obama administration expects to save billion between now and 2020. billion of this will be used to pay for the 0 billion health care bill.

SLM will do quite well despite this seeming setback. The company anticipated the change in government lending policy by executing an ingenious trick as a borrower. Early last year it made its insurance subsidiary a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines, which agreed to lend to big-borrower SLM at the extraordinary rate of .23%. And anyhow,  subsidized loans are almost always insufficient to cover the entire cost of a college degree. For a while the student gets to enjoy the benefits of a government loan. Interest rates are lower and during deferment interest does not accrue. But eventually many students must also take out a private loan, usually in larger amounts and with higher interest rates which continue to mount during deferment. Defaulted Student Loan Assistance

THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO: GOING BANKRUPT

Credit card and even gambling debts can be discharged in bankruptcy. But ditching a student loan is virtually impossible, especially once a collection agency gets involved. Although lenders may trim payments, getting fees or principals waived seldom happens.

The Wall Street Journal ran a revealing report on the kinds of  situation that can lead to financial catastrophe for a student borrower. (“The 0,000 Student Loan Burden: As Default Rates on Borrowing for Higher Education Rise, Some Borrowers See No Way Out”, Feb. 13, 2010) Here is an excerpt:

“When Michelle Bisutti, a 41-year-old family practitioner in Columbus, Ohio, finished medical school in 2003, her student-loan debt amounted to roughly 0,000. Since then, it has ballooned to 5,000.

It is the result of her deferring loan payments while she completed her residency, default charges and relentlessly compounding interest rates. Among the charges: a single ,870 fee for when her loan was turned over to a collection agency.

Although Bisutti’s debt load is unusual, her experience having problems repaying isn’t. Emmanuel Tellez’s mother is a laid-off factory worker, and 0 from her 0 unemployment checks is garnished to pay the federal student loan she took out for her son.

By the time Tellez graduated in 2008, he had ,000 of his own debt in loans issued by SLM… In December, he was laid off from his ,000-a-year job in Boston and defaulted.

Heather Ehmke of Oakland, Calif., renegotiated the terms of her subprime mortgage after her home was foreclosed. But even after filing for bankruptcy, she says she couldn’t get Sallie Mae, one of her lenders, to adjust the terms on her student loan. After 14 years with patches of deferment and forbearance, the loan has increased from ,000 to more than ,000. Her monthly payments jumped from 0 to 6. Last month, her petition for undue hardship on the loans was dismissed.”

THE FIRST AUSTERITY GENERATION’S JOB PROSPECTS

Most of those affected by the meltdown of 2008 had completed their education and were either employed or retired. The student loan debt bubble signals a generation that enters the work of paid work cursed with what is more likely than not to be a life of permanent indebtedness and low wages.  

Both recent trends and the most informed projections for the future of the labor market reveal that most of the current cohort of indebted students will face earnings prospects far poorer than what job seekers could expect during the period of the longest wave of sustained economic growth and the highest wages in US history, 1949-1973. The present generation will experience the indefinite extension of Reagan-to-Obama low wage neoliberalism. 

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers more than 50 % of all 2007 college graduates who had applied for a job had received an offer by graduation day. In 2008, that percentage tumbled to 26 percent, and to less than 20 % in 2009. And a college education has been producing diminishing returns. For while a college degree does tend to correlate with a relatively high income, during the last eight to ten years the median income of highly educated Americans has been declining.

Every two years the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues projections of how many jobs will be added in the key occupational categories over the next ten years. The projected future jobs picture indicates that the grim employment situation is not merely a temporary reflection of the current unusually severe downturn. But you miss this if you get your news only from mainstream sources. The New York Times’s report on the most recent BLS projections, issued in December 2009, paints an unduly optimistic picture of future employment opportunities. (Catherine Rampell, “Where the Jobs Will Be”, Dec. 15, 2009) Here is how a misleading report can be produced without falsifying the facts:

BLS releases two job projections, on the Fastest Growing Occupations (www.bls.gov/emp/ep_103.htm ) and on  Occupations With the Largest Job Growth (www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_104.htm). The Times focuses on the former, where the two fastest growing occupations, biomedical engineers and network systems and data communications analysts, require a college degree.  The Times echoes BLS’s comment that occupations requiring postsecondary (a bachelor’s degree or higher) credentials will grow fastest. This is redolent of the ideology of the “New Economy” : the US is turning into a society of professionals and knowledge workers, and the key to success in this upgraded economy is a college education.

But we need more information, about  the degree requirements of the total number of job categories listed in both projections, and about the number of new jobs expected to materialize in each projection. Of the total jobs listed, only one of five require a postsecondary degree. By far the fastest growing category is biomedical engineers, projected to grow 72.02 %, from 16,000 in 2008 to 27, 600 in 2018. That’s 11,600 new jobs. Is that a lot? Well, compared to what? The percentage figure, 72.02, is high, but what about the number of new jobs? Let’s compare that Fastest Growing occupation with retail salespersons, the fifth occupation on the Largest Growth list. Retail sales workers will grow by a mere 8.35 %. But that amounts to almost 375,000 new jobs, an increase from 4,489,000 jobs in 2008 to 4,863,000 jobs in 2018. Compare that to the 11,600 new jobs at the top of the Fastest Growing list. Just do the simple math on all the categories on both lists: the great majority of new jobs will be low-paying. 

The US is a nation of knowledge workers? Most new jobs will offer the kind of wage we would expect from an economy in which, according to one of Obama’s most repeated mantras, “we” will “consume less and export more”. BLS avers as much when it projects 51 million “job openings due to growth and replacement needs,” fewer than 12 million of which will require a bachelor’s degree. 

Our first austerity generation will be in debt to its teeth and stuck with low-wage work. The relative penury will require more debt still. Michael Hudson calls this debt peonage. We need to begin thinking of political organization that has little to do with the ballot box. And thinking won’t be enough…

4 Techniques for Helping Students Develop a Far better Understanding of Math

Solving math difficulties is the core to understanding math concepts. This is why it is critical for student to develop math difficulty solving abilities. The only way a student will be profitable in math is by means of issue solving practice. This is not to be confused with worksheets these are real world math troubles which permit students to make a personal connection. Worksheets are viewed by most students as busy function and worksheets are hated with a passion.

For a student to develop difficulty solving skills related to distinct math concepts, the difficulty must be something that he or she can visualize and make a personal connection. There are many ways to accomplish this, so here are a  four techniques to help them succeed.

Math Issue Solving Stratiges

The very first strategy is to start every single math class with a word issue related to the concept that was taught in the prior math class. The key with these math difficulties are that they should not be abstract – teachers believe in abstract, students do not. The examples employed in the issue must be some thing suitable to the grade level and cultural environment of the school setting.

Rural farming communities really should use examples that a farm related. Suburban schools should use some thing related to the community and the students’ lives. Urban schools need to have to use examples that are related to students’ environment. This makes it a lot more personal and meaningful to stimulate internalization of the math idea, along with how to dilemma solve.

The second method is to have students develop their own problems caution should be utilised to ensure that word troubles are suitable and are idea focused. The teacher can then post the questions on the board for other students to answer. Every single student in a class need to be given the chance to develop a problem.

A third method is a difficulty solving exercise is a hands-on situation where students are necessary to manipulate materials to solve the dilemma. For example, present a issue in which students require to figure out how numerous marbles will fit inside a jar. In this scenario students are provided with marbles so they can measure the average volume of comparable marbles. Then they establish the accessible volume in the jar. Next they are given a smaller container to determine volume and how several marbles fit in the smaller container. From this they extrapolate a reasonable estimate of the number of marbles that will fit in the jar.

A fourth problem solving physical exercise involves many math concepts for actively engaged in real globe math. Students learn a lot more from this dilemma solving physical exercise than they every single will from performing ten worksheets on the exact same math concepts. The connection to hands-on, minds-on critical math difficulty abilities are the foundation of teaching and learning math. Without having having visual and manipulative materials to solve this issue few students would be effective.

Does the requirement to solve a issue a day make the bad grades go away, the answer is a resounding yes. Students develop a much better understanding of the math concepts as they apply critical thinking and difficulty solving abilities for creating connections in math.

Introduction

According to Powell, “He who has no inclination to learn more will be very apt to think that he knows enough.”

Classrooms are social settings; teaching and learning occur through social interaction between teachers and students. As teaching and learning take place, they are complicated processes and are affected by peer-group relationships. The interactions and relationships between teachers and students, and among students, as they work side by side, constitute the group processes of the classroom.

Group processes are especially significant in twenty-first century schools. Group projects and cooperative teamwork are the foundations of effective teaching, creative curriculum, and positive classroom climate. Interpersonal skills, group work, and empathy are important ingredients of modern business, where employees must communicate well for their business to be productive and profitable. Group processes are also significant in modern global communities, where citizens must work together for a safe and secure world. Thus, along with teaching academic curriculum, teachers are expected to help students develop the attitudes, skills, and procedures of democratic community.

Teacher-student relationships provide an essential foundation for effective classroom management—and classroom management is a key to high student achievement. Teacher-student relationships should not be left to chance or dictated by the personalities of those involved. Instead, by using strategies supported by research, teachers can influence the dynamics of their classrooms and build strong teacher-student relationships that will support student learning.

 

Smith (1990) said, “Teachers who love their students are of course by that very fact teaching their students the nature of love, although the course may in fact be chemistry or computer science.” He thoroughly endorses out-of-class contacts between students and faculty, “because they reveal something to the student about reality that can, I suspect, be learned no other way. Such contracts demonstrate that ideas are ‘embodied.’ They do not exist apart from a person, remote or near at hand, who enunciates, who takes responsibility for them by declaring them, by speaking about them.” Or in the words of Woodrow Wilson, “We shall never succeed in creating this organic passion, this great use of the mind until (we) have utterly destroyed the practice of merely formal contacts between teacher and pupil.”

 

Literature Review

 

Wubbels and his colleagues (Wubbels, Brekelmans, van Tartwijk, & Admiral, 1999;

Wubbels & Levy, 1993) identify appropriate dominance as an important characteristic of effective teacher-student relationships. In contrast to the more negative connotation of the term dominance as forceful control or command over others, they define dominance as the teacher’s ability to provide clear purpose and strong guidance regarding both academics and student behavior. Studies indicate that when asked about their preferences for teacher behavior, students typically express a desire for this type of teacher-student interaction. For example, in a study that involved interviews with more than 700 students in grades 4–7, students articulated a clear preference for strong teacher guidance and control rather than more permissive types of teacher behavior (Chiu & Tulley, 1997). Teachers can exhibit appropriate dominance by establishing clear behavior expectations and learning goals and by exhibiting assertive behavior.

Class Description

The present study observed a class of thirty students of Sylhet Women’s College. The teacher was a Bangladeshi male with several years teaching experience at Bangladeshi government colleges. The goal of this class is to teach the students’ conversation, reading, listening and writing skills. Their English ability level is intermediate. During the observation period, the students appeared motivated and attentive, and they seemed to be enjoying the class. The researcher observed class being out of the notice of the students.

Identification of Problem

It is observed that the students didn’t respond willingly to the teacher’s questions and did not participate in class discussions. Students also never asked the teacher questions outside one-on-one situations. Thus the teacher received little oral feedback Most of the learners sit looking straight ahead using minimal facial expressions, gestures and verbal utterances. The teacher said, “I want the students to be more demonstrative and more overtly communicative in their feedback. I want these behaviours: I want the students to ask me questions, make comments and to respond with nods and shakes of the head, with sounds of agreement or sounds of understanding. Also, I want them to be both reactive and proactive”.

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Investigation

The present researcher observed the 2nd year of Higher Secondary Class. In the first 30 minutes, the class went through an intermediate level oral dialogue. The students first listened to the dialogue read out by the teacher with their books closed, then again with the books opened. Next, they did a dictation exercise consisting of 15 short sentences based on the dialogue. The teacher then talked about the sociolinguistic and grammar points of the exercise and went on to probe for comprehension:

Teacher: Do you have any questions? Do you understand everything? Students: (no response from the students) Teacher: Okay, how many people were speaking? Students: (no response) Teacher: How many people were speaking? Students: (no response) Teacher: There were two. Two people. Were they friends or strangers? Students: (no response) Teacher: Should I read out the dialogue again? Students: (no response from any body) Teacher: Should I translate the dialogue into mother tongue? Students: ( looking at one another)

The teacher asked a few other questions which also drew no response or reaction from the students. The students then had to answer some questions about the conversation in their book. Most of the students seemed to have little trouble doing this, and if there were any questions, they readily asked the student sitting next to them. The second half of the class was devoted to pair work using the phrases and vocabulary from the taped dialogue in role play. The students seemed to enjoy this, and most tried to create their own dialogues. The teacher circulated the room checking on the progress of each pair. The class atmosphere was markedly different from the first half of the class, with chatter and occasional laughter filling the air. The students answered most of the teacher’s questions with alacrity, and some even asked their own questions.

Analysis of the Observation

It is found that the students of the reviewing class generally understand the teacher’s questions; it was felt that there was something else that kept the students from responding voluntarily in the class-teacher dialogues. Since most Bangladeshi students are taught to listen and not to question a teacher in class, Bangladeshi students have little or no experience in in-class interaction with the teacher, such as questioning or commenting or giving feedback. Students are usually taught to be quiet and respectfully listen to the teacher. By teaching the students that class interaction with the English teacher is not only acceptable, but normal, useful and beneficial, it was believed that the students would become more interactive with the teacher in teacher-class interaction.

Suggestions for the Teachers

1. How do you encourage students to be active and interested?

From the first day, demonstrate and talk about your own enthusiasm for the course material, and how it helps you personally. Look for ways to connect the material to the lives of your students. Use current event articles, editorials from local newspapers, or examples from your own life that illustrate your points. Solicit these examples from your students. Create a “need to know.” As you are preparing your lesson plans, ask yourself – why would a student need to know this? This helps you think about material in terms of its relevance to students’ lives.

2. How do you deal with apathetic students?

Try to build a personal relationship with these students, and take an interest in them to find out what is at the bottom of the “perceived apathy.” Learning students’ names and using names in class can help students understand that you are interested in them and in their success in your course. Consider e-mailing a student who seems disinterested or unresponsive and let him/her know that you would like to help them in any way that you can. Oftentimes their apparent apathy has nothing to do with the course. There may be personal matters that are dominating their attention. Some students are going through a period of depression which disconnects them from their studies. Showing a little concern can be very helpful.

3. How do you get my students to prepare for class?

Give students some kind of assignment. They often need this structure. They also need accountability. Make sure the assignment is not just busy work. Design it to be relevant and use whatever the students have prepared directly in class. Some teachers ask a few study questions, some give a short quiz, some ask students to write a response to the reading. You can require a short assignment with each reading, but they do not all have to be graded. You can tell students that out of the 8-10 assignments they will turn in, X will be graded. These will be done at random so it is important that each assignment is completed. This will help with your grading workload. When assigning reading, give the students a few questions on which they must take a stand (debate) at the next class meeting.

4. How can you recognize different learning abilities and work with them individually?

In order to recognize different learning abilities, you must observe your students carefully and make written records to help you see any patterns that may be occurring in the child’s learning. You might notice different ability levels in the way they think, the product they produce, and the way they interact with others. These are all differences which affect student learning. Be sure that you offer a variety of different learning experiences in your class. Provide some creative/artistic activities, book work, skits, real-world scenarios, music, discussions, etc. that will both challenge some students and make others feel a higher level of success. It is hard to find time to work one-on-one with students. However, you might be able to find parent or community volunteers who are willing to come into your class and work one-on-one with different students. Another way is to spend some extra time with those students while monitoring during individual work time. Pairing a higher ability student with one who needs extra help is an excellent way to provide peer tutoring. This should not be done every single day, but on an as-needed basis. Lastly, before and after-school tutoring is an excellent time to work one-on-one with those students who need extra help. Find out about your students’ interests, experiences, hobbies, career goals… As often as you can, relate the content to students’ interests. Use lots of examples, illustrations, anecdotes, stories. Use humor. Use appropriate self-disclosure. Be a “real” person. Let students know some things about you. Admit mistakes, lack of knowledge. Don’t try to be THE authority. Instead, model where students can find the information. Knowing where to find the answers is just as important as knowing the answers. Talk less than your students do. Encourage interaction among students. Use group work, encourage discussion, try brainstorming, role playing, whatever you feel comfortable with. Try something Give positive feedback, verbally (praise) and non-verbally (make eye-contact, smile, nod). Make sure that the level of teaching matches students’ background, ability, and experience. Check that the relevance of what you’re doing is clear to the students. Use as much VARIETY in your methods and materials as possible. Be clear about what’s going to happen. Use an agenda. Encourage students to make decisions about their own Learning — give them CHOICES, act on their suggestions. If possible, encourage students to have input into how they will be evaluated. Ask students how the sessions could be made more interesting! Engage students in their learning. Activity is much more motivating than passive listening or passive responses. The more students DO, the more they will learn.

Conclusion

There were some areas where the results of this action research were not as successful as hoped. For instance, the students needed to be prompted with eye contact and a repeated question from the teacher to answer a question, and when they did not understand something, they still did not interrupt the teacher with a question. And yet some progress was definitely made, especially when the brief span between observations is considered. The students did interact with the teacher by nodding, some did answer the instructor’s questions, and two, on their own initiation, even asked questions before the class. The unanticipated side effect of the teacher becoming more concerned with the interaction was a welcome surprise and contributed to the improvement. There seems to have been some success in instructing and reminding and then expecting the students to become more interactive with the teacher.

Reference

Aronson, Elliot, and Patnoe, S. 1997. Cooperation in the Classroom: The Jigsaw Method. New York: Longman.

Cohen, Elizabeth G. 1994. Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom, 2nd edition. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University.

Dewey, John. 1916. Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan.

Good, Thomas, and Brophy, Jere E. 1997. Looking in Classrooms, 7th edition. New York: Harper and Row.

Johnson, David W., and Johnson, Roger T. 1992. Learning Together and Learning Alone, 3rd edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Lewin, Kurt. 1948. Resolving Social Conflicts. New York: Harper.

Miles, Matthew. 1981. Learning to Work in Groups, 2nd edition. New York: Teachers College Press.

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