Mastery learning more fully reflects a communication oriented approach to instruction in which instruction focuses on the individual student. In its purist form course planning is oriented toward the achievement of desired objectives that are operationalized in behavioral terms. In other words, teachers decide exactly what they want their students to know, what they want them to be able to do, and/or how they want them to feel as a result of a period of instruction, and also specify how they will assess whether or not those goals have been achieved. They assume that students have varied competencies at the
beginning of a course or school year and individually assess each student's starting point. Instructional strategies are then selected and designed for each student's individual competencies and learning style. The teacher's role is primarily that of a "learning manager" who uses periodic formative assessments to check how each student is progressing toward the stated goals. If problems are detected, the student can recycle through a component of the unit or course at any time, often with the information presented via an alternative instructional strategy. "Grades" are restricted to an indication that the student has indeed mastered the objective at hand; her or his performance is evaluated by comparing it with the specified standard of achievement rather than to what other students do. Some students may move faster than others but no one is classified as better than anyone else since, in the end, everyone masters one unit before moving onto the next.
Bloom, one of the primary proponents of mastery learning, has found that the average tutored student learns more than do 98 % of students taught in regular classes, and that 90 % of tutored students attain performance levels reached by only the top 20 % of students in regular classes. Thus, he has concluded that what one student can learn, nearly all students can learn; the wide differences in student achievement in traditional education systems are, from Bloom's perspective, not so much a result of innate differences in learning ability as they are a result of instruction that is ineffective for some students. A tutoring relationship is one in which the process of tutor-student communication is inherently personalized, in which the goal of achievement is met by ongoing assessment of what is working, what is not being understood, and what needs to be re-taught in a different way. It is student-centered in that affective outcomes are important, but it is instructor-driven in that the student is enabled to meet goals rather than able to determine them.
Bloom acknowledges that schools cannot afford to offer tutoring as a primary mode of instruction; however, he believes that mastery learning can approximate the results of tutoring. In an interview with Chance (1987), Bloom explained a classroom mastery learning model as follows: The teacher instructs the class in more or less the usual way, although more active student involvement and reinforcement of their contributions are recommended. At the end of an instructional unit, or about every two weeks, the teacher gives a "formative test" to assess the need for "corrective instruction." The test is not graded, but provides the teacher with information that identifies points that many of the students have not yet mastered. This material is then re-taught to the class as a whole, ideally using different techniques to get the idea across.
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The students then break into groups of two or three for 20 to 30 minutes, so that they can help one another on points they missed on the formative test. This process provides reinforcement for students who understand concepts and allows them to explain what they have learned to other students, often using an approach the teacher has not used or even considered. If the group gets stuck, they can call on the teacher, though Bloom notes they usually are able to work problems out on their own. Some students who need help beyond the group work are assigned supplementary activities that presents information in yet another form (workbook exercises, text readings, video tapes, etc...). According to Bloom, it usually takes these students no more than an hour or two to complete the work necessary to catch up.
The class is then ready for an evaluative test, which is similar to but not identical to the formative test. In a pure mastery learning system, students who have not yet mastered the unit are recycled through the system until they do master it, with unlimited opportunities for working through the material until they can complete the evaluative test at a preset level of accuracy. In a modified mastery system, which will be discussed in the next section of this chapter, trials may be limited. In either case students either pass or do not pass the unit; their relative performance is not evaluated in comparison with other students' performance on the evaluative test.
Not every student does master every unit, but studies have consistently shown that mastery students learn more than about 85 % of those taught in the traditional way. About 70 % of mastery students attain levels reached by only the top 20 % of students in traditional classrooms. Studies have also indicated that students who learn in mastery systems are better able to transfer material to other contexts, that mastery learning helps students learn how to learn through its presentation of material in a variety of formats, and that mastery approaches have substantial affective learning payoffs with students reporting greater interest in and more positive attitudes toward subjects taught through mastery.
Bloom and his graduate students have also studied the use of the mastery approach in the preassessment phase of the instructional process. Students in second-year algebra and French classes who were given a preassessment test at the beginning of the year to determine what they recalled from the first-year course, and then re-taught the specific skills they lacked using the mastery learning corrective method, did far better on the first unit of the new course than did those in comparable classes that were offered only a general review of first-year concepts prior to beginning the first unit of the second-year class. When the prerequisite training was combined with a continuation of the mastery approach in the
second class, the average student scored higher than did 95 % of those in a regular class after three months of studying the same material.
Mastery learning is a communication-oriented approach to instruction, but it takes time. Teachers will "cover" less but more students will be successful in mastering the chosen material. Such has been found to be the case with all effective communication systems. It seems we always have the option of sending more, but having receivers who receive less; or sending less and having receivers who receive more of it. If a smattering of knowledge is all that is needed by the student, as in so-called "core curriculum courses" in many colleges, the traditional system certainly can accomplish that objective more efficiently than the mastery system. But, if one is concerned about teaching a pilot to land a plane without crashing, most passengers pray that he or she was taught by the mastery system!