A teacher must follow new model. In order to teacher can improve achievement’s student. Teacher use CTL to help teachers relate subject matter content to real world situations and motivates students to make connections between knowl¬edge and its applications to their lives as family members, citizens, and workers and engage in the hard work that learning requires. It helps students connect the content they are learning to the life con¬texts in which that content could be used. Students find meaning in the learn¬ing process. As they strive to attain learn¬ing goals, they draw upon their previous experiences and build upon existing knowl¬edge. By learning subjects in an integrated, multidisciplinary manner and in appropri¬ate contexts, they are able to use the ac¬quired knowledge and skills in applicable contexts (Berns and Erickson 2001).
A national conversation has emerged in recent years regarding the best way of teaching to attain higher student achievement. Since the hallmark report A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983), calls for school reform to produce more effective schools as measured by the achievement of all students have inundated the country. This focus on student achievement, often measured by standardized tests in such academic areas as reading, mathematics, and science, has challenged career and technical educators.
A national conversation has emerged in recent years regarding the best way of teaching to attain higher student achievement. Since the hallmark report A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983), calls for school reform to produce more effective schools as measured by the achieve¬ment of all students have inundated the country. This focus on student achievement, often measured by standardized tests in such academic areas as reading, mathematics, and science, has challenged career and technical educators.
From Behaviorism to Constructivism and Contextual Teaching and Learning
The early 20th-century roots of career and technical education can be found in the theories proposed by David Snedden and Charles Prosser, who suggested that the public schools were an arm of the social system of our society and, thereby, had an inherent mission to further the good of society by contributing to its social efficiency. Then called vocational education, CTE offered a means of preparing well-trained, compliant workers for that efficient society. At the same time, an emerging teaching and learning theory, behaviorism, was proposed in which E. L. Thorndike suggested that learning resulted from links formed between stimuli and responses through the application of rewards. Schools would teach students the right work and moral habits. Behaviorism has served as the basic teaching and learning model for CTE (Doolittle and Camp 1999). It continues to be seen in performance objectives, criterion-referenced measures, task lists as a source of curriculum, and specific, predetermined skills demonstrated to industry standards.
In 1910-1920 was constructivism. In this teaching and learning model, students construct their own knowledge by testing ideas based on prior knowledge and experience, applying these ideas to a new situation, and integrating the new knowledge gained with pre-existing intellectual constructs. Rooted in the theories of John Dewey (1900), constructivism calls for active participation in problem solving and critical thinking regarding an authentic learning activity that students find relevant and engaging (Briner 1999).
CTE has not tended to include constructivist ap¬proaches to the extent it has embraced behaviorism. Although Prosser and the field of vocational education embraced the engaging element of constructivism, the nature of the curriculum more appropriately lent itself to the approaches of behaviorism. CTE teaching and learning approaches have included both direct instruction usually individual, drill-and-practice exercises based on behaviorism and projects. Direct instruction is an expert demonstrating to students in a horticulture class how to plant roses, followed by students individually planting their own roses with the instructor monitoring and providing feedback as the students practice. The same class may be planning a service project as members of the FFA student organization to provide gifts for the residents of a local nursing home during a holiday season. For this service project to represent constructivism through CTL, the teaching and learning processes must include the characteristics of CTL. Although direct instruction may be appropriate for helping students reach certain learning goals, CTL provides the means for reaching other sets of learning goals that require higher-order thinking skills.
Definition of CTL
Contextual teaching and learning is a conception of teaching and learning that helps teachers relate subject matter content to real world situations and motivates students to make connections between knowl¬edge and its applications to their lives as family members, citizens, and workers and engage in the hard work that learning requires. It helps students connect the content they are learning to the life con¬texts in which that content could be used. Students then find meaning in the learn¬ing process. By learning subjects in an integrated, multidisciplinary manner and in appropri¬ate contexts, they are able to use the ac¬quired knowledge and skills in applicable contexts (Berns and Erickson 2001).
Underlying Support for CTL
A legitimate pedagogy to be applied with students to CTL, it must be based on sound educational prin¬ciples, theories, and practices. It builds upon bodies of literature that include theo¬ries and writings by Dewey (1900), Piaget (1929), Bruner (1966), and others. Thus, it is an extension of past thinking, theories, testing, and writings. More contem¬porary work has included syntheses by Resnick and Hall (1998) and themes iden¬tified by Borko and Putnam (1998). Ex¬amples of theories and themes that relate to CTL follow:
a. Knowledge-based constructivism—Both direct instruction and constructivist activi¬ties can be compatible and effective in the achievement of learning goals (Resnick and Hall 1998).
b. Effort-based learning/incremental theory of intelligence—Increasing one's efforts results in more ability. This theory opposes the notion that one's aptitude is unchange¬able. Striving for learning goals motivates an individual to be engaged in activities with a commitment to learning (ibid.).
c. Socialization—Children learn the stan¬dards, values, and knowledge of society by raising questions and accepting challenges to find solutions that are not immediately apparent, along with explaining concepts, justifying their reasoning, and seeking in¬formation (ibid.).
d. Situated learning—Knowledge and learn¬ing are situated in particular physical and social contexts. A range of settings may be used such as the home, the community, and the workplace, depending on the pur¬pose of instruction and the intended learn¬ing goals (ibid.).
e. Distributed learning—Knowledge may be viewed as distributed or stretched over (Lave 1988) the individual, other persons, and various artifacts such as physical and symbolic tools (Salomon 1993) and not solely as a property of individuals. Thus, people, as an integral part of the learning process, must share knowledge and tasks (Borko and Putnam 1998).
Characteristics of Contextual Teaching and Learning
CTL attributes include its interdisciplinary and contextual nature, approaches that can be used to implement it, factors that address individual needs of students, and the teacher's role.
Interdisciplinary Learning, Problem-based Learning, and External Contexts for Learning
In CTL, Learning must be extended across disci¬plines so that students gain a real-life per¬spective. They see how the knowledge and skills relate to their lives either now or in the future. Real-world situations and prob¬lems rarely represent only one discipline. The students can better under¬stand life situations (e.g., those presented at the workplace), identify and effectively solve problems, make wise decisions, and think creatively. then students are en¬gaged in a classroom research project in which they are studying city plans to change a natural preserve to a housing development near the school, they would need to be learning and applying language arts, mathematics, and scientific knowl¬edge while addressing the agricultural is¬sues inherent in such a situation. Whether the agriculture teacher is the only instruc-tor involved, or a team of teachers from the academics and CTE subject areas are collaborating, the learning goals would transcend one specific discipline.
The learning goals may be based on:State, local, and/or professional association content standards from the involved dis¬ciplines;Such skills as the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS1991),WorkKeys® (ACT 2001), and other family, employability, and pro¬cess competencies;andhigher-order thinking skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making.
In CTL, experiences help students make connections with both internal and exter¬nal contexts. They begin with their exist¬ing knowledge, past experiences, and other current classes or situations (Berns and Erickson 2001) and conduct activities in such external contexts as the school, home, workplace, and the Internet. These expe¬riences result in a deeper understanding so that students are more likely to retain competencies for a longer period of time and be able to apply them in appropriate ways at appropriate times in the future. then the integration of academic and ca¬reer-technical education helps the student understand the content of both the aca¬demic subject matter and the subject mat¬ter of the career and technical area of study. All teachers, individually or in teams of career-technical and academic teachers, can use CTL to increase student learning and achievement in such integration ef¬forts, thus resulting in better meeting the purposes, goals, and objectives of specific schools, classes, and education in general.
Approaches for Implementing CTL
A variety of teaching approaches may be used. Five teaching approaches have emerged that include context as a critical compo¬nent. They engage students in an active learning process. These approaches are not discrete. They can be used individually or in conjunction with one or more of the oth¬ers. Although varying in the literature, the following definitions are intended to cap¬ture the essence of the concepts as means for implementing CTL:
Problem-based learning—an approach that engages learners in problem-solving investigations that integrate skills and con¬cepts from many content areas. This approach includes gathering information around a question, synthesizing it, and presenting findings to others (Moffitt 2001).
Cooperative learning—an approach that organizes instruction using small learning groups in which students work together to achieve learning goals (Holubec 2001).
Project-based learning—an approach that focuses on the central concepts and prin¬ciples of a discipline, involves students in problem-solving investigations and other
Meaningful tasks, allows students to work autonomously to construct their own learning, and culminates in realistic products (Buck Institute for Education 2001).
Service learning—an approach that pro¬vides a practical application of newly acquired (or developing) knowledge and skills to needs in the community through projects and activities (McPherson 2001).
Work-based learning—an approach in which workplace, or workplace-like, activi¬ties are integrated with classroom content for the benefit of students and often busi¬nesses (Smith 2001).
CTE instructional models CTL approaches are: cooperative education, work experience programs, internships (paid and unpaid), apprenticeships, in-school laboratories, simulations, and school-based enterprises. However, these models do not automati¬cally use the CTL process. To do so, the teachers need to include the characteristics of CTL identified in this section.
Activities and projects sponsored by career-technical student organizations may also include various attributes of CTL. For ex¬ample, if the FFA service project for a nursing home cited earlier were to be based on the problem-based learning approach, the students would have identified the specific project after being presented with a "fuzzy" situation, such as "a nursing home in town might have some needs." The students would then spend time in the nursing home. The project, then, would be intended to reach specified learning goals from math-ematics, language arts, and horticulture as identified in the standards and curricu¬lum.
Factors that Address Individual Needs of Students
The following factors when using one or more of the CTL approaches (Berns and Erickson 2001). These concepts are based on cognitive re¬search that has provided a rich knowledge base on how people learn.
Teachers must :
a) Plan lessons that are developmentally ap¬propriate for the students.
b) Include interdependent learning groups.
c) Provide for an environment that supports self-regulated learning.
d) Address the multiple intelligences of stu¬dents.
e) Include questioning techniques that en¬hance student learning and the develop¬ment of problem solving and other higher-order thinking skills.
f) Include authentic assessment.
The Teacher's Role
The teacher ‘role as facilita¬tor, organizer of the teaching/learning/as¬sessment process, role model, learning mentor, content specialist, and knowledge dispenser.
School Reform, Career Technical Education, and CTL.s Role
CTL can serve as the pedagogical component of this reform in all subjects and at all grade lev¬els for all students. It provides a means for teaching to be improved within the vary¬ing innovative initiatives designed to pro¬duce increased learning by all students. Career and technical education is developing and implementing a variety of models for orga¬nizing schools and programs in a way that makes sense to students, brings meaning to the classroom in the form of relation¬ships between subject matter and careers, and elevates the level of learning by all stu¬dents. Career academies, majors, and path¬ways as well as tech prep are examples of these models.
CTE is increasingly be¬ing seen as a means for enhancing academ¬ics. By providing a curriculum that is based on the need for students to demonstrate mastery of rigorous industry standards, high academic standards and related general education knowledge, technology, and gen¬eral employment competencies, CTE pro¬vides an avenue for school reform, espe¬cially at the high school level.
Lynch (2000) suggests a major influence on the entire educational system. A new world of fast communication, rapid decision making, international activity, cyberspace, ever-changing market demands and standards, increasingly sophisticated computers, and the need for a more thorough knowledge of the whole business environment (ibid.)
The following di¬rections of the new career and technical edu¬cation (p. 1):
• Preparing students with the education and technical skills they will need for successful employment in various careers or professions
• Teaching students about all aspects of an industry
• Enhancing academics by bringing real-world context and application—especially targeted to workplaces—to education
• Teaching students how to apply high-level math, science, technology, and language in workplaces and communities
• Preparing high school students for college, should they and their families choose for them to attend
• Preparing students with the academic foundation to be lifelong learners
The following language arts and mathemat¬ics standards would apply (VIML 1999):
• Apply measurement and spatial skills
• Apply statistical analysis skills
• Analyze critical data
• Create graphs and charts
• Use spreadsheet software
• Apply listening skills
• Apply technical writing skills
Employability learning standards would also be sought (ibid.):
• Use scheduling techniques
• Use word-processing software
• Contribute to teamwork
• Build interpersonal relationships
• Demonstrate technological literacy
• Apply self-management processes
The National CTL Initiative
CTL implementation requires the teacher to play a significant role. Indeed, studies suggest that "what teachers know and can do is the most important influence on what students learn" (Darling-Hammond 1996, p. 6). Although student characteristics, including socioeconomic status, account for variance in achievement, the teacher's knowledge of the sub¬ject matter and skill in the use of decision making, problem solv¬ing, creative thinking, instructional planning, implementation of plans, and assessment of situations and students make a definite difference in how much students learn, at what level the students learn, and to what extent they retain that knowledge.
From that work, seven additional projects were funded to create models for the recruitment and preserve preparation of future teachers and development of in-service teachers. These projects are described here (source: U.S. Department of Education 2000). Although most of these models are still under development, con¬tact information is included for readers interested in learning more about them or in identifying products and their availability.
*)Take it from Robert G. Berns and Patricia M. Erickson
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