The Academic Achievement Challenge: What Really Works in the Classroom?

A full century of research on different kinds of educational approaches is analyzed in The Academic Achievement Challenge: What Really Works in the Classroom? Author Jeanne S. Chall delved into historical accounts, descriptive and qualitative observations, reports of teachers and parents and quantitative research.

The result is a book that tries to answer the question suggested by her title: What type of education best advances student achievement for students?

Chall was an emeritus professor of education at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education until her death in 1999. In this, her last book, she brought her high standards of research and her extensive educational background to the discussion of student achievement.

The two basic educational approaches used in America over the past century are the traditional teacher-centered classroom and progressive student-centered education. There has been a movement in American public education toward a more open, student-centered approach over the last century.

The quantitative studies cited by Chall generally show that teacher-centered classrooms produced higher academic achievement. Descriptive research studies also tend to confirm these findings. Chall concludes that a traditional approach would work well in the information age.

She offers two major recommendations. One is for a greater emphasis on a traditional teacher-centered approach, and the other is for more regular application of educational research for improving teaching practices. The more effective instructional programs, Chall says, have strongly structured teaching practices that specify the skills and knowledge needed to be achieved by students.

(The Academic Achievement Challenge: What Really Works in the Classroom? by Jeanne S. Chall, Guilford Press, 72 Spring St., New York, N.Y. 10012, 2000, 210 pp., $27.50 hardcover)