Speaking of Madeline Hunter

We weren't speaking of Dr. Hunter, but I thought I'd use this title as a hook to lead you into this week's blog posting. In class last week, we discussed the importance of placing corresponding text and graphics near each other. This helps the mind create connections between words and pictures and increases the transfer of knowledge. I'm oversimplifying the point a bit, but I'm using it as a set-up to get back to Madeline Hunter.

When I read this chapter, my mind reeled back in time to the early 1990s when I was a young English major who planned to teach at the secondary level. One of my undergraduate classes focused on Madeline Hunter's 1982 book Mastery Teaching, and I remembered a discussion of how a teacher can create relationships by the way words are written on the chalkboard. I dug out my copy of Mastery Teaching and found a chapter called "Teaching to Both Halves of the Brain." In this chapter, Dr. Hunter discusses how teachers can use chalkboards to indicate relationships based on their position on the chalkboard. If a teacher writes the word NIXON above the word FORD, the student can infer that NIXON comes before FORD. But if the teacher wrote NIXON next to the word FORD, the student might infer that the teacher is drawing some kind of parallel between the two. Dr. Hunter closes this section of the chapter by saying,

"When we are aware of the power of position in space to suggest relationships, we avoid placing items on the chalkboard in a haphazard fashion or where there happens to be space. We place each item deliberately so its position indicates its relationship to other material on the chalkboard (causal, oppositional, numerical, comparative, categorical, etc.)" (p. 41).

I saw immediate parallels between a chalkboard and an e-Learning screen. The way we position items on a screen indicates a relationship, whether it's one or more textual concepts, corresponding text and graphics, or instructions and a practice exercise.

I love it when I can tie new learning back to previous learning!

Book reference:

Hunter, Madeline. (1982). Mastery teaching. El Segundo,
   California: TIP Publications.