"Learning stations" are a waste of time, writes Daniel Buck. Motivated achievers may be able to learn independently, but most students learn best when the teacher teaches.
In many classrooms the teacher gives a brief mini-lesson, "before setting kids loose to transition through a maze of stations full of glitter, glue, and razzmatazz," he writes. As the teacher moves around the room or works with a small group, students are "engaged" in activities. But are they learning?
Learning stations offer "a hodgepodge of the promising and the pointless," writes Buck. Some tasks require more thinking that students realistically can do, while others require none at all. There's "lots of needless coloring or word searches."
A video on Edutopia, praises a station-based classroom, Buck writes. "What’s the point of a twenty-minute station where students spend their time cutting, pasting, and writing in rainbow letters?"
While there's virtually no research on learning stations, he writes, other studies suggest students learn more when class time is spent on teacher-directed activities, such as direct instruction, modeling and questioning.
In the 1980's, researchers found “structure, direct instruction, teaching the whole class and discussion led to greater achievement, Buck concludes. "Teacher talk" was more effective than "student talk."
"Explicit, mostly whole-class, intellectually engaging instruction," with checks for understanding, is a key element of effective teaching, writes Mike Schmoker, a former teacher and administrator, in Education Week. He's the author of Results NOW 2.0: Untapped Opportunities for Swift, Dramatic Gains in Achievement.
Educators are infatuated with "high-sounding schemes, ill-conceived mandates, fashionable theories, pedagogic methods, programs, and school arrangements, writes Schmoker. Instead of training teachers in effective instruction, schools focus on “whims, fads, opportunism and ideology.”
Esther Quintero, writing about the importance of background knowledge on the Shanker Institute blog, also plugs "explicit, systematic, well-organized instruction."