Lemov’s Taxonomy

Elizabeth Green writes a very thought-provoking piece in this Sunday's NY Times Magazine.  Building a Better Teacher

Two of the main themes are

1.  Doug Lemov’s Taxonomy. (“Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College.”)  Central to Lemov’s argument is a belief that students can’t learn unless the teacher succeeds in capturing their attention and getting them to follow instructions.

2.  Deborah Loewenberg Ball's idea of Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching, or M.K.T.  Mathematicians need to understand a problem only for themselves; math teachers need both to know the math and to know how 30 different minds might understand (or misunderstand) it.  (The same would apply to reading, spelling, etc.)  Ball says that at the heart of M.K.T. is an ability to step outside of your own head. “Teaching depends on what other people think, not what you think.”



Together these two themes suggest that teaching is an extremely specialized skill/occupation.  This is, of course, encouraging for teachers who want to be better.  However, it points in a ominous direction for the economics of education.  For this can only mean that education is going to get even more expensive.  Education seems to be one field that has no notion of 'productivity.'   In many ways it seems to be either a very artisanal enterprise, or an industrial one.  The former is expensive.  The latter suffers from very poor quality.