What determines pupils' learning success? Not least the "diagnostic competence" of teachers, say maths didactics experts Astrid Fischer and Johann Sjuts. This needs to be firmly anchored in the training programme - and represents a real challenge.
It is a completely normal maths lesson task. "The birthday group is going on an excursion," she begins. "The children are travelling in a red and a green minibus. There are 13 children on the red bus. There are 6 fewer children on the green bus than on the red bus. How many children are on both buses together?"
Most pupils solve the task correctly: there are 20 children. But sometimes a pupil answers: There are 19 children. What exactly is behind this? And how can teachers help here?
Didacticians and educational researchers call the quality that the teacher must have in order to arrive at the right solution together with the pupil "diagnostic competence". In principle, teachers must be able to diagnose their pupils' learning processes, i.e. to recognise what is going on in their heads in order to find the right learning support for each individual.
Teachers must be able to find the right learning support for the individual.
This is a real challenge, which in the past could not be taken for granted. The PISA results of the past few years were also not very pleasing in terms of the diagnostic skills of German teachers. However, a lot is now happening in teacher training and there has been a real upswing in diagnostics - and not just since the renowned New Zealand education researcher John Hattie's research became known, according to which pupils' learning success depends to a large extent on teachers' skills.
For the past three years, the central concern of OLAW - a joint project based at the Didactic Centre in which regional partners are involved - has been to advance support diagnostics: the University of Oldenburg, the Oldenburg, Leer, Aurich and Wilhelmshaven study seminars as well as numerous practical and seminar schools. The creators of OLAW have already been recognised for their targeted development of diagnostic skills: In the competition "From the university to the classroom: new ways of cooperation between universities and study seminars in teacher training" organised by the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft.
What can diagnostic competence look like in detail? To stay with the initial example of the maths task: First of all, a pupil must correctly grasp the specific details in the text - buses, children, bus colour and number of children. It is therefore a question of reading and understanding the text correctly. However, this is not enough.
Diagnosing and supporting are one and the same in real time.
In a second step, it is important to move away from the concrete and focus on the key words that express mathematical relationships - i.e. the words "less" and "together". A crucial support measure for the teacher can then consist of identifying mathematical relationships in concrete situations and using teaching materials to consolidate this ability.
Diagnose and support: The example shows how closely the one is related to the other, how little the two aspects can be separated in the classroom. It is always important to link one directly with the other - and to do so in an ongoing process. Diagnosing and supporting are one and the same in real time. This is why it is so important for prospective teachers to acquire the ability to diagnose and support during their training.
To provide pupils with constant insight into the status of their learning.
It is therefore good and beneficial that teachers are increasingly becoming the focus of attention when it comes to the question of what is decisive for academic and teaching effectiveness. It all comes down to the teacher. We now know that successful teachers are those who are active, who feel consistently responsible and who constantly give pupils an insight into their learning progress. And in this new profile of requirements, diagnostics has an almost outstanding significance.
The calculation is even simpler than the maths problem of the birthday group going on an excursion: if the appropriately trained teachers have developed diagnostic skills, this increases the quality of teaching. To do this, teachers must continuously monitor - and scrutinise - the effectiveness of their own actions. The pupils will benefit from this.
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THE AUTHORS
Dr Astrid Fischer is Professor of Didactics of Mathematics at the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Oldenburg.
Dr Johann Sjuts is Associate Professor of Mathematics Didactics at the Institute of Cognitive Mathematics at the University of Osnabrück as well as Senior Director of Studies and Head of the Leer Studienseminar für das Lehramt an Gymnasien.