One of the cruel lessons in life is that communication cost money, and the more effective that communication, the more it costs. Politicians are forced out of campaigns for office by lack of money for TV and personal appearances. Companies are forced out of business by high costs of marketing. And while advocates of the mastery learning system would like to see it replace the traditional educational system, given the pressing economic realities in most school systems, most teachers must teach their entire careers within the parameters of a traditional school system. Students must be ready to pass on to the next level of the system on schedule, and teachers are expected to assign evaluative grades.
Pure mastery learning allows students unlimited time to achieve learning objectives and evaluates them only to the extent of whether they have achieved an objective or whether they need more time to master it. However, many of the advantages of mastery learning can be retained within a modified mastery learning model of instruction, which has the advantage of its ability to be practically implemented within the currently established traditional system.
Two modifications characterize modified mastery: a limitation on the amount of time given to students to demonstrate mastery of instructional objectives and in the number of opportunities students have to demonstrate mastery. Students might be given a limited time to master a given unit of instruction, or be allowed to recycle at their own paces throughout a semester (or quarter or year), with the expectation that they will complete all the units of study for that term by its completion. Students might also be given a limited
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number of chances to improve performance on a given unit, so that after the second or third cycle of teaching all students move onto the next unit of instruction.
While these modifications mean that some students will need to move on without mastering some objectives, the likelihood is high that most students will achieve more than they would in a traditional classroom. The sequencing of units becomes particularly important in a modified mastery model. Teachers might cluster basic and more advanced units within each completion time block, so that students who need more time to master objectives are being introduced to -- and given time to master -- all of the basic concepts they will be expected to have when they pass on into the next grade or the next level course, while students who master the basic concepts more quickly can move onto working with more complex enrichment objectives.
The issue of grading is a tough one for teachers who have embraced the concept of mastery learning. When a dichotomous grading system, such as pass-fail or satisfactory-unsatisfactory, is allowed there are fewer problems than when a graduated index, such as A, B, C, D, F, is mandated. One way to translate mastery learning performance into grades is to set levels in which the number of objectives that are mastered is translated into a grade scale. This process assumes that all objectives are of equal complexity and/or importance, or that students are not able to move onto enrichment objectives until they have mastered those considered most basic to the unit or course -- otherwise, a student could theoretically earn a superior grade for having failed to master only a few objectives, even though those missed objectives are the ones the teacher believes are the most important to grasping the essence of the unit.
Another way is to classify the objectives in a unit cluster into basic and advanced levels, with a standard that students must master all or most of the basic objectives to obtain an average grade and that students must master all or most of the basic objectives and a preset percentage of the more advanced objectives to obtain above average grades. In either case, it is helpful to communicate to students, their parents, and others who will interpret the grades exactly what each letter designation means. It is also mandatory to remember that students must be evaluated against objective standards rather than in comparison to one another.
The logistics of implementing a modified mastery learning model can be challenging but highly rewarding. Following the first formative evaluation, Bloom's suggestions for whole-class involvement can be followed to re-teach concepts or skills with which many students had trouble. Teachers might develop independent study materials or direct students who are quick to master basic objectives to resources with which they can work
while other students work more directly with the teacher on recycling through problematic objectives. Or, projects and assignments that address sequentially higher-level objectives might be developed and offered to students, as they are ready for them (not all objectives are best demonstrated through the use of tests and quizzes). Since the pure mastery model is already being modified to accommodate the constraints of a traditional education system, teachers should not feel bound by emulating someone else's version of modified mastery. The most important aspect of the system is its process-centered orientation, its provisions for examining how students are doing, and its emphasis on working out ways to help them do better during the course of instruction rather than waiting to the end to see how they did and promptly moving on.
Because we believe that teaching and learning is a communicative process, we find much merit in the communication-oriented approach to instruction. This view focuses on the interaction between teachers and students and on analyzing the success of the instruction in accommodating its goals to a maximum number of students. As a communication-oriented approach, mastery learning, or modified mastery learning, encompasses a humane
instructional view while acknowledging the teacher's role in setting the instructional agenda, and in helping students master a particular subject area curriculum. Thus, both learning and affect are treated as relevant outcomes of instruction, and both are likely to be enhanced.
References and Recommended Readings
Bandura, A. (1969). Principles of behavior modification. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Bloom, A.D. (1987). The closing of the American mind: How higher education has failed
democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students. New York: Simon and
Schuster.
Bloom, B.S. (1981). All our children learning: A primer for parents, teachers, and other
educators. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Bloom, B.S. (1984, June/July). The 2-Sigma problem: The search for methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring. Educational Researcher, 4-16.
Bloom, B.S. (1985). Developing talent in young people. New York: Ballantine. Chance, P. (1987, April). Master of Mastery. Psychology Today, 43-46.
Elkind, D. (1979). Child development and education, a Piagetian perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
Guskey, T. (1990). Cooperative mastery learning strategies. The Elementary School Journal,
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Hirsch, E.D., Jr. (1987). Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
McCroskey, J. C. (1998). An introduction to communication in the classroom (2nd Ed.).
Acton, MA: Tapestry Press.
Popham, W.J. & Baker, E.L. (1970). Systematic instruction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Richmond, V. P. (1990). Communication in the classroom: Power and motivation.
Communication Education, 39, 181-195.
Rogers, C. (1969). Freedom to learn: A view of what education might become. New York: Merrill.
Rogers, C. (1983). Freedom to learn for the eighties. Columbus, OH: Merrill.
Shor, I. & Friere, P. (1989). A pedagogy for liberation: Dialogues on transforming education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.