2. PROBLEM SCENARIO
Mr. Vallano has just administered the midterm
examination in his college prep math course and
is very surprised and disappointed in the fact
that his students have done so poorly. Although
this is the first time he has formally assessed his
students this semester, prior to the exam he was
confident that most of them were learning the
3. skills he wanted them to acquire. Indeed,
whenever he had asked them questions in class,
at least a few of his students were able to come
up with the right answers. Moreover, most of the
homework assignments the students had handed
in contained very few errors. Yet, many of the
students performed very poorly on the exam;
4. in fact, quite a few of them were unable to
answer the questions covering the basic skills
Mr. Vallano had taught at the beginning of the
semester. Now Mr. Vallano wonders what went
wrong. Could he have implemented his
instruction in a manner that would have enabled
him to spot and correct these problems sooner?
5. The Problem Scenario is an example of a
Traditional Approach to Instruction and is shown
in Figure 1.
The teacher presents a unit of instruction to the
entire class and moves on to the next unit, where
the cycle is repeated.
6. BACKGROUND INFORMATION
A. Traditional Approach to Instruction – it has
been labelled group instruction
Figure 1
Present a
unit of
instruction
Assess all Assess all
the the
students students
Present a
unit of
instruction
7. RESULT
A few students do very well;
A few do very poorly; and
Most of them end up somewhere in the middle.
8. B. Individualized Instruction
In recent years various attempts have been
made to tailor instruction to the individual abilities
of students. Most of these efforts have resulted in
instruction called individualized instruction.
9. DIFFERENT WAYS TO INDIVIDUALIZE INSTRUCTION
Allow each students to proceed at their own pace.
Provide different instructional materials for
different students.
Allowing students to work on different objectives.
10. RESULT
Serious classroom management problems.
Students have the strong desire to work together, whether it is
in a small group or in a large group under the direction of a
teacher.
SOLUTION
Alternative approaches have been proposed, one of the
best known of these is the Mastery Learning Approach.
11. CHAPTER OBJECTIVE
At the end of the discussion:
Students will be able to describe how to employ a
mastery learning approach in a given learning
situation.
12. MASTERY LEARNING APPROACH
The Mastery Learning is based on the philosophy
that all children can become achievers if taught
at a level of their own proficiency, and
encouraged to progress at a rate of their ability to
master clearly defined units of learning. Mastery
learning proposes that all children can learn
when provided with the appropriate learning
conditions in the classroom.
13. Example of a Mastery Learning Approach
Enrichment
Activities
Yes
Did
Formative students
Unit 1 Assess- achieve Unit 2
ment mastery?
No
Remedial Formative
Class Assessment
14. The Mastery Learning Approach
It is an instructional philosophy based on the
idea of giving students more than one chance to
demonstrate mastery of content and skills.
In a Mastery Learning classroom, as in a
traditional classroom, students receive
instruction on a topic and then take a test to
determine their level of understanding. But
that's where the similarity ends.
15. In a Mastery Learning classroom, the teacher
scores that assessment and determines who has
mastered the content and who needs more help.
Students who have mastered the material are
given "enrichment" opportunities, while those
who have not mastered it receive additional
instruction on the topic.
16. After a day or two, a retest is administered to the
group who did not demonstrate mastery. Most of
the students who didn't master it the first time
are able to achieve mastery on the second test.
The teacher then proceeds to present the next
unit of instruction to the entire class , and the
same cycle of activities begins.
17. Every time you begin a new unit of instruction,
you can feel confident that your students have
mastered the concepts needed to embark on new
learning.
18. BENJAMIN BLOOM
Mastery learning, as a theoretical approach, goes
back to the work of Benjamin Bloom in 1968, who
came up with the “Learning for Mastery” (LFM)
method. Bloom was interested in how he could
improve traditional classroom instruction by
examining what it was about individual tutoring
that made it an effective instructional approach.
19. SUMMARY- MASTERY LEARNING:
Provides a model of instruction that is effective
for a wide range of students;
Reduces the academic spread between the slower
and faster students without slowing down the
faster students;
The skills and concepts have been internalized
and put to use in other areas of the curriculum;
It is an alternative to the unsuccessful
traditional methods of teaching and learning.
20. SUMMARY
Mastery learning is not a new method of
instruction. It is based on the concept that all
students can learn when provided with conditions
appropriate to their situation.
Although, Mastery learning will not solve all
the complex problems facing educators.
21. Nevertheless, careful attention to the
elements of mastery learning allows educators at
all levels to make great strides in their efforts to
reduce the variation in student achievement,
close achievement gaps, and help all children to
learn excellently.
22. “What is important is that all students can
learn and grow, and no one is left behind.”
